The online gun community registers billions of views and new followers every year. 97% of people are more likely to buy a product after watching an online review and that goes for guns too. In a country where 45000 people die every year from guns, there is a need for higher online gun safety standards and bigger accountability from the gun content creators. Guns Down America, an NGO focused on higher standards for gun ownership, wanted to take on this challenge and help raise awareness over this issue. Just like other potentially dangerous industries come with specific disclaimers and warnings – like warnings on cigarettes, or pharma, etc – the gun industry needs one too and consequentially so does gun online content. A small act like adding a warning before a video could potentially save lives.

To raise online gun content standards and help save lives, we created gun reviews by people who know a gun’s performance better than anyone: gun violence survivors. Each survivor reviewed the exact gun that almost took their life and talked about the technical details and performance capabilities, before revealing the story behind each review. The format used was exactly the same as any regular gun review, they had their own channel and were targeted at the gun content community. The reviews called for warning labels on gun-related content and greater accountability from creators and media sites.

Gun safety standards have to start from within the gun community, through gun enthusiasts who stand by safety practices. But starting a conversation with and about the online gun community is not an easy task, especially when you’re an NGO that believes in the need for higher safety standards for gun ownership. So to do that, we hijacked the format used by gun enthusiasts – gun online reviews – and told the gripping stories of gun violence survivors by having them review the guns that almost took their lives. Posting the reviews in gun communities and engaging with them on social media, made our targeting to the gun content creators inevitable. By sharing our stories, even those who wouldn’t stand behind the campaign would only help spread the word around the need for greater accountability among gun content creators.

“Gun Survivor Reviews” was the first digital-first campaign designed specifically to live in places where consumers and the online gun community would be primed to listen and engage. Data was used to inform everything from type of gun reviewed, content placement for maximum impact, and even activation launch timing (leading up to a season when young people are primed to be outdoors and gun violence soars: Spring). Working together, PR and social were used to amplify our reviews and drive conversation in the online gun community.

Owned Impressions: 234,159

Owned Engagements: 14,069

Owned Engagement Rate: 6.01%

Earned Impressions: 111,824

Earned Engagements:1670

Total impressions: 345,983

Total Engagements: 15,739

Average ER: 4.55%