Communications Innovation Award Winner: eBay

The eBay Government Relations Team was working on a tight deadline to create a Small Business Activity Across Italy Report in time for its Rome Seller Advocacy Day, which brings sellers together with policymakers. For 15 years, the team has produced reports like these in a number of countries, showing policy makers how eBay levels the playing field for small businesses.

It’s typically a two-to-three month process to produce a report and requires multiple rounds of content and layout edits. The end result was typically a PDF file that the eBay Government Relations team posted to its website, printed and handed out at events and in meetings, and linked to in a blog post.

Alan Elias, senior manager of digital advocacy & policy communications at eBay, wondered if there wasn’t a better way. “Something we’ve thought a lot about in recent years is how to reach new people,” he says. “Content consumption methods have changed and evolved. People have limited time. They want information on their mobile devices.”

Collaborating with AI to Create a Podcast

Elias turned to Google’s NotebookLM, an AI tool that can produce a variety of content types. He uploaded the report and asked for an audio overview, including parameters like length for the output. The AI platform returned a first draft of a podcast in a short amount of time.

It was a good start, but far from perfect. Elias learned how to prompt the platform to focus on the most important parts of the report, keeping the parts he liked and uploading talking points to improve the parts he didn’t. “It was a collaborative process with the AI,” he explains.

In the end, he had a five-minute audio podcast called “The Deep Dive,” featuring two AI hosts having a discussion about the report’s findings. The finished podcast took a few hours to produce, saving time and resources.

Elias also used AI tools to create a condensed version of the report as a digital landing page, which allows people to easily access the report’s findings on mobile, without having to download or print out a PDF.

Using AI for Translation on a Deadline

Since the report was for Italian policymakers, it was important to offer the final report in Italian. But as the team approached their deadline, they weren’t sure they could get it done in time.

eBay has an internal translation team, but it would take them up to four weeks to translate the report — if they had the bandwidth to take it on.

Again, Elias turned to an AI solution. “I uploaded the English version to Google Gemini and collaborated with the AI to create the best prompt by explaining what the final product was for,” he says. “I got the translation right away.”

He then had a native speaker review the translation for errors and accuracy, an important and necessary step. Still, even with the human review, the translation process took less than an eight-hour day.

Now We Know What’s Possible

The report, along with the accompanying digital version, podcast and Italian translation, were well received by policymakers and sellers alike. Sellers could quickly refresh themselves with talking points by skimming the digital version of the report or listening to the podcast. Policy makers could access the full-length report and digital version in both English and Italian.

Elias’ team now has a roadmap for providing new forms of communications for audiences. As AI tools continue to improve, the eBay team plans to keep experimenting with them, while always ensuring a human is checking the final product for accuracy and impact.

“Multimodal campaigns like this are typically reserved for larger teams and outsourced vendor budgets,” Elias notes. With AI tools, those types of campaigns are now in reach for smaller teams like Elias’s. “Now we know what’s possible.”

Grassroots Innovation Award Winner: Best Friends Animal Society

When Best Friends Animal Society started its Best Friend Action Team advocacy program in 2019, it quickly transformed into a fully virtual program due to pandemic restrictions. Their first two advocacy action weeks in 2023 and 2024 were completely online.

But that approach had largely reached its limit. They were attracting the same highly motivated advocates, but not reaching the thousands of pet adopters who could be advocating for local animal welfare policies. There were a few reasons for this: The virtual actions were focused on national issues instead of local policies, and many pet adopters see themselves as animal lovers but not advocates.

“Our supporters are comfortable being called fosters, adopters and donors, but they don’t always think of themselves as advocates,” says April Muller, senior strategist of advocacy communications with Best Friends. “Besides, rescuing a puppy looks a lot more compelling than speaking at a city council meeting.”

Going Local to Recruit New Champions

Muller and her team wanted to reach these passionate supporters and transform them into advocates. They wanted to create community advocates who felt confident enough to lead local change.

They began by analyzing data to see where local policies were most needed to save animal lives, or where legislation was already moving and could use a boost. They also considered factors like how accessible each location was. They didn’t want advocates to have to travel a long way or spend a lot of money.

The team then organized local “Bring No-Kill Home” summits, in-person events designed to recruit, inform and energize everyday animal advocates across the country. The summits took place in five cities between February and May 2025: Little Rock, Arkansas; Cherry Hill, New Jersey; Chicago, Illinois; Pomona, California; and Provo, Utah. The series ended with a national virtual summit in June.

To make sure people felt comfortable and confident attending, Best Friends was intentional with its outreach and marketing efforts. They promoted each event as an opportunity for anyone in the community to come learn what they can do to help dogs and cats. They avoided advocacy-specific and shelter-specific language to make these events feel accessible and welcoming to everyday people.

The stereotype of an animal welfare advocate is often a white woman. Muller wanted everyone to feel welcome and included, so she was careful to include diverse images in the summits’ marketing. The team also set the cost of attending the summit to $25, including a one-year Best Friends Animal Society membership, so cost would not be a major barrier to attending.

Building Advocate Confidence In-Person

Each summit was tailored to the community hosting it, incorporating local speakers and issues. Attendees were then invited to practice advocating for pets in local shelters through hands-on workshops.

The in-person nature of this training was a big reason it was so successful. At all five summits, Best Friends Animal Rescue offered training for making public comments at city council meetings. They explained why this kind of action can be so impactful, then showed attendees a speaking template, and asked them to draft a brief public comment in the room. Volunteers gave practice comments outloud and received nonjudgemental feedback.

“They were so happy to be able to try it in a supportive space,” says Muller. “We ask people to do this all the time but they’re not going to do it for real without practice.”

Welcoming More Advocates for Lasting Impact

Leveraging the confidence and momentum gained at the Little Rock summit, one Arkansas attendee successfully advocated against a policy prohibiting the adoption of pitbull-type dogs from her local shelter. Policies like these are a major barrier to Arkansas shelters reaching no-kill status. This new advocate went on to receive the “Excellence in Advocacy by a Volunteer Leader” at the Women in Government Relations Leadership and Advocacy Conference for her efforts.

“We sometimes underestimate everyday animal lovers’ interest in getting more involved because they’re intimidated by the word ‘advocacy,’” says Muller. “Don’t underestimate what your supporters may be willing to do with a little more guidance and coaching.”

Lobbying Innovation Award Winner: U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association

In late 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a regulation that required all U.S. tire manufacturers to add additional emissions control devices to their factories. The rule didn’t make sense — U.S. tire plants were already well-below mandated emissions levels, and the emissions control devices worked by burning natural gas, which would have created more pollution than they stopped.

Normally, the U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association (USTMA) would engage with the EPA over several years to amend rules that have a significant impact on the industry. But this rule was issued after the general election, and the government relations team saw a faster path forward given the new political reality.

Starting with A Civics Lesson

In 2025, USTMA used the Congressional Review Act (CRA) process to undo the EPA’s burdensome rule with bipartisan support. A CRA requires a majority vote in the House and Senate before being signed by the president and can only happen in a very short window of time. The process is rarely used, in part because it’s often seen as a hyper-partisan practice, usually requiring one-party control of the legislative and executive branches.

“We started with a civics lesson for our members to frame what the CRA process is” explains Nicholas Scoufaras, USTMA director of government relations. Historically, most CRAs get pushed through by bashing the previous administration, but USTMA has longstanding relationships with regulators at the EPA. They wanted to leverage the CRA process without harming those relationships or their commitment to environmental sustainability.

“We talked with our members about what a CRA is, how it works, why we don’t use it regularly, why we have the opportunity to use it now, and what the time constraints are,” says Scoufaras. “It was about helping them understand the opportunity before us, getting them comfortable with this strategy and making them confident enough to go out and amplify our advocacy efforts.”

Achieving Bipartisan Consensus

Leveraging the association’s relationships on Capitol Hill — as well as the relationships of the association’s 11 member organizations — USTMA lobbied across the aisle to achieve broad understanding and agreement about this harmful rule.

“We stuck to the facts,” says Scoufaras. “Air pollution is a sensitive issue. No one wants more air pollution, and if we’re asking the EPA to rollback a rule, we needed to demonstrate the negative outcomes of the rule. We had the data on our side, showing how the rule would increase greenhouse gases.”

They targeted legislators on both sides of the aisle and worked to have nuanced, data-driven conversations with them.

The CRA passed with bipartisan support, an important achievement in a polarized political environment.

“This was a rapid response effort for us,” notes Scoufaras. “Going from idea to a bill signed in six months.” The member education piece was critical to their success, so that USTMA members recognized the opportunity and why it was so important to move quickly. “We’re always going to keep our reputation as a trusted source in mind and our values intact, so we want our members to feel confident about the strategies we choose.”

“This year’s group of innovators really pushed the boundaries of what people in the public affairs profession can do,” says Alex Wirth, co-founder and CEO of Quorum, a supporter of the Innovation Awards. “During a time of great technological change when speed and data are playing an increasingly pivotal role, they showed impressive ingenuity and resilience.”

“What I love about this year’s winners is that they didn’t accept limits,” says Public Affairs Council President & CEO Nneka Chiazor. “Faced with tight timelines, complex policy challenges and new technologies, they found smarter, faster ways to get results. At a moment when public affairs is more important than ever, these innovators show what’s possible when you aren’t afraid to get creative and try a fresh approach.”

About the Innovation Awards

The Innovation Awards are presented annually at The Advocacy Conference. Winners are invited to present their campaigns during the awards ceremony.

Could your organization be a future winner? Learn more.