Within its category, Sandy Hook Promise has a unique mission and approach. Rather than solely pursuing policy change, it empowers individuals to prevent violence by educating on the signs that someone may be planning a

shooting.

For the 2019-20 school year, SHP pushed to integrate its free programs and tools into statewide education systems and aimed to significantly expand its supporter base and fundraising over this period.

And SHP’s mission has never been more critical. Every year, 2,920 American children die from gun violence, and 32 children and teens are shot each day. Guns are now the second leading cause of death among American children and teens. The scale of this tragedy is only increasing.

Despite this dire reality, SHP needed to fight to break into the public consciousness. We needed to capture the country’s attention as the school year kicked off, building awareness, driving emotional impact and sparking conversation.

We co-opted the most perfectly “normal” representation of school life: seasonal back-to-school advertising.

These borderline banal ads have become the background noise of the season. By infusing this profoundly ordinary setting with the disturbing reality of the “new normal” of gun violence in schools, we could grab attention, spur powerful emotions, and convey a clear message.

We developed a PSA which starts like any other back-to-school ad, but then a school shooting unfolds onscreen. The back-to-school items that only minutes ago seemed harmless and innocent now become a matter of life or death, used by terrified young students to escape or defend themselves from an active shooter.

We extended the PSA across a variety of media platforms and channels, mimicking traditional back-to-school tactics and copied the channel strategy and tactics of seasonal back-to-school retail advertising – each time subverting the expected message with the realities of the “new normal.”

We needed to breakthrough and ensure our message reached parents, students, and educators. That meant extending beyond news into entertainment and other places where back-to-school messaging typically appears. We knew the emotional impact of the PSA would be stronger when seen in unexpected places.

The multichannel campaign ran for 6 weeks. On social, we worked with teen influencers to bring our shocking twist on back-to-school to younger audiences. We built a custom Snapchat experience that drove to the SHP website. On Twitter, influencers and celebrities quickly amplified the reach of the PSA.

The PSA also ran on linear TV (CNN, HLN, TBD, A+E, Viacom), streaming video services (Roku, Hulu), and premium video publishers (Verizon, Viacom, Xandr). We covered key markets with OOH placements including digital OOH in shopping malls.

Display media and print placements covered the cultural spectrum, including USA Today, Forbes, New York Magazine, InTouch, OK!, Star, and Life&Style.

We dominated the back-to-school conversation.

Within the first two weeks of launch, the PSA received nearly 76 million views (+26MM in the first 24 hours) and a staggering 3.9 billion media impressions.

Over 4,400 media stories covered the spot, with many featuring forceful op-eds or extended, emotional on-air discussions of the PSA.

Google search for “Sandy Hook Promise” was 4x higher than any time since the organization’s inception.

Real-time web tracking of viewers found that exposed audiences were 4.5x as likely to show “brand intent.”

New supporters joined and were ready to take action. 48,000 people made the Sandy Hook Promise, and SHP added more than 78K new social media followers.

But we were most astounded by the response among our government elite audience, as 11 presidential candidates, including leading candidates like Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and Kamala Harris, shared our PSA and their support on social media.