Lately, the NRA has been using social media to push its radical agenda and monetize every possible holiday–even Christmas. So, once they tweeted @Santa asking him for ammo in exchange for cookies, we knew we needed to use their tweet against them and shift the conversation to a subject they always avoid: Gun violence consequences.

Since social media is the place where our target shapes their opinions about significant issues like gun control, we issued a response that sparked anti-gun violence debates on all social platforms, making each of them crucial for our campaign's success.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) used to be designed around firearm safety and competency. Over the years, it became the most shameless pro-gun lobbying organization in America, known for giving millions of dollars to politicians to push their radical agenda. And most recently, for using social media to monetize every holiday.

With everyone’s focus on the pandemic, gun violence seemed to have been solved in 2020. But when the NRA turned to social media to co-opt the holidays with a tweet that asked Santa for ammo in exchange for cookies, we knew we had the right opportunity to respond and bring the conversation back to our main focus: gun reform.

We turned the NRA’s tone-deaf tweet against them by responding with a pledge to bake 1,700 bullet-riddled cookies, one for each kid who dies every year in America because of gun violence. We'd baked these cookies and invite everyone around the country to bake their own, sharing on social media using #OneCookiePerKid, and eventually sending the cookies directly to NRA’s doorstep.

Big national problems like gun violence deeply affects Everyday Americans. Since social media plays such a significant role in the battle to influence people’s perspectives on this issue, we knew our response needed to spark anti-gun violence conversations throughout all social outlets to be successful.

That's why we used all of our social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) to respond to the NRA's post quickly and invited the nation's top anti-gun organizations to join the initiative, thus amplifying its reach and inciting more people to talk in favor of gun reform.

After turning the NRA's tweet against them with our reply, we quickly started baking bullet-riddled cookies and invited Everyday Americans to also bake #onecookieperkid.

We utilized CTR's social media platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube) to communicate the initiative since social media plays a crucial role when influencing perspectives on major issues like gun violence.

We also focused our efforts on amplifying the story in the news, as it plays an important role when shaping people’s opinions on big issues. Lastly, we delivered the cookies to the NRA six days after the tweet was sent, since we knew that speed of response was crucial to shift the conversation.

We were so successful, that for the first time ever in Change the Ref’s history, the nation’s top anti-gun organizations joined us in supporting the movement.

1. Surpassed 65M impressions through national and global media coverage. More than double the anticipated amount.

2. By all measures, we “went viral” with young adults on TikTok, delivering 472,000 views and 38% engagement despite having an audience of just 14k.

3. Top anti-gun violence activists David Hogg & Guns Down America amplified the message and joined the effort to bake bullet-ridden gingerbread boys and girls.

4. Along with our 1,700 cookies, over 19,000 cookies more were sent to the NRA from all over the country by supporters of our movement.