Case Study: South of Market Community Action Network (SOMCAN)

Educating a Community through Culture-Driven Storytelling

The Problem

SOMCAN (South of Market Community Action Network) is a grassroots organization based in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, dedicated to fighting for immigrant and low-income families through community advocacy. With the 2024 election approaching, SOMCAN needed to educate the Filipino American community on complex housing legislation—specifically Costa-Hawkins—and mobilize public awareness in a culturally relevant and accessible way.

The challenge? Explaining abstract policy issues like rent control to an audience that’s not always politically engaged on Instagram or Facebook, without sounding like a textbook. With limited internal content capacity, SOMCAN partnered with One Down to bring both strategy and execution.

The goal: Create a high-reach, multi-post content campaign that educates, builds trust, and encourages collective action—all while remaining deeply personal and rooted in Filipino community storytelling.

Our Work

We launched a cross-platform storytelling campaign combining visually compelling social posts, shortform videos, and articles optimized for SEO. Each week’s content tackled a new angle of the Costa-Hawkins conversation to gently move audiences down an educational funnel:

Week 1: What is Costa-Hawkins?
Week 2: Who is impacted?
Week 3: How can we change it?

Our messaging leaned into culture-first, personal storytelling, using family imagery and emotionally resonant headlines to transform policy into something intimate. The campaign included:

6 social posts + 2 shortform videos
Strategy and creative development from One Down’s virality team
Distribution across One Down’s network for maximum reach
An emphasis on authenticity over generic graphics—content that felt like it was “for us, by us”

THE RESULTS

185,532+

total reach

11,933+

engagements across likes, comments, shares, and saves

127

new followers, signaling lasting interest and audience trust

Several posts significantly overperformed benchmarks—especially those that leaned into personal narratives rather than generic education. One Down’s post featuring a family visual saw 140+ likes in under 10 minutes, a signal that Filipino community-centric content drives action.