The aftermath of a mass shooting in America is all too familiar: Calls to pass stricter gun laws, pushback from the NRA, and nothing changes. But after the school shooting in Florida something did change: advocates started targeting companies with ties to the NRA. To support this cause we created “Branded Bulletproofs” to call out brands that are complicit by maintaining ties to the NRA. Our activation strategy was three-fold: The right moment (National School Walkout), the right place (a Brooklyn high school) and the right figure (a pair of students not holding signs, but wearing bulletproof vests as a potent symbol rebellion).

There have been 1,624 mass shootings in almost as many days in our country. No other developed nation comes close to this level of gun violence. Yet the National Rifle Association or NRA (one of the most powerful lobbies in America) blocks any attempts at reform.Branded Bulletproofs was conceived after the February 2018 Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Florida that left 17 children dead which ignited some of the largest protests in American history ranging from The March For Our Lives - a student-led demonstration in Washington D.C with over 1 million demonstrators to #Enough Walkout - in which thousands of students walked out of their schools. Two powerful cultural contexts made this possible. A new generation of young adults raised on gun violence found a powerful voice, and Americans started to see corporations as a source of pressure and ultimately change rather than government.

We needed a symbol to capture depth of the problem, a symbol of the insanity we’re living in. There is unique horror of a bulletproof vest strapped to a child at school, which we knew would be memorable. The logos on the vests proudly advertised “sponsor” brands: companies whose ties to the NRA made them complicit in gun violence. These sponsors enjoyed free exposure on CNN, The New Yorker, the rarified pixels of Reddit’s Front Page, and over 85k Twitter likes. It even earned support from Samuel L. Jackson by way of Instagram. Most importantly, YouTube recently announced a ban on firearms demo videos. That’s a start.