Between The Lines, by Kaitlyn Carnie and Zola Prendeville

BACKGROUND
Politics. It’s a word our audience recognises but feels distance from. Gen Z and Millennials are smart, capable and informed. Yet when it comes to politics, many retreat into disengagement, avoidance. Not because they don’t care, but because politics often doesn’t feel like it sees them. It rarely speaks to their anxiety around housing, their climate concerns, or job market instability. So why participate in a conversation that doesn’t sound like it’s meant for them? Because it matters. Their collective vote shapes governments at both federal and state levels, influencing the policies that directly affect their everyday lives. This distance leads to obligatory votes, default decisions made on autopilot, inherited rather than considered. Our challenge is to break through their disengagement by speaking in their language. Without pressure, authority or judgement. Simply sparking curiosity about the role Build a Ballot could play in their next state vote.

STRATEGY
An underlying driver of disengagement is cognitive overload. Gen Z and Millennials operate in an attention economy where content is constant, competitive and instantly dismissed if it feels institutional or detached from their reality. On platforms like TikTok attention and engagement is earned through emotional immediacy, not authority. With state politics often feeling abstract and impersonal our audience disengages and avoids. To break through this disengagement, we needed more than attention. We needed emotional recognition. Few cultural moments signal ‘this matters’ as instantly or universally as taking a pregnancy test. Pregnancy content is one of the TikTok’s most engaged topics, generating over 2.2 million posts and 74.5 billion views. Regardless of gender or circumstance, taking a pregnancy test represents a deeply personal moment of future planning. It is private, urgent and directly effects lives. By positioning Build a Ballot in a similar vein to a pregnancy test, we align vote planning with a behaviour rooted in clarity, agency and future impact. Speaking to concerns that directly reflect our audience’s lived experience. The analogy does more than interrupt. It demonstrates understanding. Because Build a Ballot doesn’t lecture. It sees them. Utalising pregnancy testing language allows us to avoid political lingo, which keeps our audience emotionally open. The film transforms voting from abstract politics into a personal act of checking before it’s due, successfully disrupting default behaviour and make planning feel simple, human and significant.