97% of people are more likely to buy a product after watching an online review. That goes for guns too. The online gun community registers billions of views and millions of new followers every year. In a country where 45,000 people die every year from gun-related injuries, there is a need for higher online gun safety standards and greater accountability from gun content creators. Guns Down America wanted to take on this challenge, not only to help raise awareness of this issue, but to get gun enthusiasts to watch an entire Gun PSA and consider the potential harm of guns and gun-related content.

We created gun reviews told by people who understand a gun’s capacity to inflict death and destruction better than anyone: gun violence survivors. Survivors reviewed the gun that almost took their life, describing its technical specs and performance capabilities, before sharing their own personal near-death experience with that gun, mimicking the online gun review format. We created our own channel where our survivors’ reviews called for warning labels on gun-related content and greater accountability from creators and media sites. By hijacking the online gun review format, we start a conversation about gun safety within the gun community itself. Data was used to inform everything from type of gun reviewed, to content placement for maximum impact.

Gun reform content typically only reaches people who are already against guns. To make meaningful progress toward gun safety, we wanted to engage people outside the gun reform echo chamber: gun owners and enthusiasts.

Younger gun owners are among the most likely to consume some type of gun-related media. If you’re not in the gun community, you might be surprised to hear that Gun Twitter, #GunTok and “GunTubers” are thriving online communities. These communities own, collect, and cherish their guns.

One of the most popular content formats in this community is gun reviews, in which content creators review everything about the gun, from the technical details to performance capabilities. Watching guns being glorified through online reviews led to our insight: Despite the damage they do, guns are treated like any other product online.

Casting gun violence survivors was a huge challenge. We cast survivors who had to step into the shoes of people who support the things that have hurt them the most: Gun YouTubers.

We first worked with Guns Down America to identify survivors in their network, before completing broad social & web searches for survivors who were already producing their own content or featured in news stories. When reaching out to this larger group, we moved at a slow pace with survivors to develop a process of conceptual development that they'd be most comfortable with. Not all survivors we spoke with were ready to present themselves in this way, but we ended up with a shortlist of individuals who saw this content as a method of expressing their bravery.

In less than a week, the gun survivor reviews had been watched by thousands of gun enthusiasts. The campaign also converted into real action, leading people from different backgrounds to share our gun safety content, from gun enthusiasts to anti-gun politicians. Most impressively, we achieved this incredible reach and expanded Guns Down America supporter base, all with a $0 paid media budget.

Without paid media, we effectively reached and engaged a new audience: gun enthusiasts

• Generating Twitter engagement rates 143x the non-profit average. (Social Insider, 2022)

• Earning 338,663 Twitter impressions, an increase in 31% from last year. (Guns Down America, owned channel report 2022)

• Garnering 13,148 engagements, 338% above our benchmark. (Guns Down America, owned channel report 2022)