Up for Growth

Through research, outreach and education, Up for Growth explores the trends behind the U.S. housing shortage, explains its various causes, and advocates for policy and regulatory solutions at the local, state, and federal levels. With a broad slate of legislative priorities that include zoning reform, transit-oriented development and climate-friendly planning, Up for Growth has a strategic imperative to maintain smart, targeted communications across media channels, platforms, and markets to ensure its ideas and data drive public discourse around one of the nation’s most urgent challenges.

In 2021, as Up for Growth relocated from the Pacific Northwest to Washington, DC, and created a national issue portfolio, it engaged Westfourth to up-level marketing and communications to reach a growing number of federal policymakers, coalition partners, and stakeholders. Central to Westfourth’s strategy was positioning Up for Growth research and data as compelling and authoritative in a marketplace crowded with information generated by think tanks, advocacy groups and government sources.

Through events, social media, press outreach and other tactics, Westfourth maintained a steady cadence of communications to ensure that Up for Growth’s reports, conferences and experts became recognized as vital to the public’s understanding of the nation’s housing crisis and were consistently referenced in policy discussions at the highest levels.

Results:

Within months of engaging Westfourth – and following the national release of its 2022 Housing Underproduction in the U.S. report – Up for Growth’s profile increased dramatically, driven by media coverage in the New York Times, NPR, Bloomberg and hundreds of regional press outlets across the country. Sustained by national and state-level media strategies, coverage of Up for Growth continued throughout the year, eventually leading to an impression count numbering in the billions. Today, Westfourth continues to support Up for Growth as the organization conducts ongoing research and education toward the goal of solving the nation’s housing crisis.