The attitude toward repealing laws in Maryland, as Gov. Martin O’Malley admits, is “no how, no way.” That could change now that state legislators have heard from the Geek Squad, a team of uniformed Best Buy Co. Inc. employees who roamed the state Capitol lobbying against the tax.

Here’s the story, which earned Best Buy and its Geek Squad the Council’s 2009 Grassroots Innovation Award in the “corporate” category: In November 2007, behind closed doors, the Maryland legislature passed a 6 percent sales tax on computer services, making this the state’s only taxed service. 

‘We Need You!’ 
Between January and March of 2008, Best Buy dispatched more than a dozen of its Geek Squad agents to the state Capitol in Annapolis – the same computer technicians who work behind the counters of Best Buy stores. Dressed in jackets emblazoned with the “Geek Squad” logo, wearing “Geek Squad” lapel pins and driving in black-and-white Volkswagen Beetles that also carried the logo, the Geeks were instantly recognizable. They met with state lawmakers, wrote them emails, faxed them and testified before House and Senate committees. 

The results were unexpected. When the agents walked through the halls of the Capitol, staff would appear, shouting, “Yeh, Geek Squad! We need you! Our computers are broken!” recalls Kiarash Navaie, one of the squad’s special agents. In May, before the tax would take effect, legislators repealed it. 

‘Passion and Motivation’ 
The lesson learned, according to Amy Mortenson, government relations lead for Best Buy, was this: “Engaging a new set of employees or group isn’t as difficult as it may seem. You need to have a passionate… set of people that can clearly articulate the issue to others and get them engaged via word of mouth, via email and other vehicles that are unique to your company.” 

“The common characteristic of all the 2009 winners,” says Rikki D. Amos, the Council’s associate director of political involvement programs, “was their recognition of the importance of getting people involved in a way that makes sense to them and therefore makes them powerful and authentic voices inpublic policy debates.” 

This was true of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, which won for “innovative use of technology,” and of the Entertainment Software Association’s Wall of Protest project, which won in the “association”category. Both programs were supported by co-award winner, Grassroots Enterprise.

The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids’ “I Am Smoke Free” project used the social-networking components of Facebook to share grassroots actions. “This is a powerful way to combine both ‘viral’ and word-of-mouth marketingapproaches to spread a message within a social network,” said Mike Panetta, vice president, Grassroots Enterprise. 

The Entertainment Software Association’s Wall of Protest allowed video game enthusiasts to submit photos of them holding signs that read, “Leave My Games Alone.” Using Flickr — a photo-sharing technology — the pictures were posted to demonstrate opposition to government regulation.

For more information about the Grassroots Innovation Awards, please visit www.pac.org/gia