Hasta La Creative!

Advertising agency Spawn Ideas has launched the latest edition of its 90×2020 initiative for the United Way of Anchorage, a multi-year, integrated-marketing campaign that aims to raise funds that the organization will use to increase the local high school graduation rate to 90% by 2020.

“Look Beyond the Labels” is the tagline for the 2019 campaign, which is targeting TV, print, radio and digital media to show people the various barriers that keep students from getting an education.

“The strategic idea was to give Anchorage a story they could root for and include them in the solution,” said Kaylee Devine at Spawn Ideas. “So many times, people look at kids who skip school or who do poorly as bad or lazy, when the truth is we don’t know what they’re going through. They might have to take care of younger siblings or maybe don’t get enough to eat and can’t concentrate enough to do well.”

The objective of “Look Beyond the Labels” is to tell stories that create empathy for students who are having trouble staying in school and, it is hoped, to generate donations to United Way programs that research has shown can help them graduate. The initiative has been successful thus far: When it began in 2005, the graduation rate was 59.6% [compared with the national average of 73%]. It has risen to 81.6% in 2019.

In one TV ad, set in a classroom, the camera focuses on a student who stares straight ahead with a dead-eyed glaze. “I’M NOT SMART ENOUGH,” the screen reads. However, as the camera pans back, additional text appears, making the picture—and the kid’s words—come into better focus. “It’s not that I’M NOT SMART,” the young man explains. “I just can’t think when I don’t get ENOUGH to eat.”

In “I HATE SCHOOL,” we learn that what a teenage girl actually loathes is getting teased by other students about wearing dirty clothes to class. “There’s more to every kid’s story,” a female narrator says, before directing viewers to the 90by2020.org website to learn more about how they can help Anchorage students graduate.

Print ads use a similar tack and feature teens with sensational labels like, “I’M A LOST CAUSE” or “I’M JUST LAZY.” However, when we look closer and read between the lines, we see smaller text that helps tell a more complete story.

The campaign is running as both paid media (radio, TV, digital) and PSAs (TV) in Anchorage, Alaska. PSAs will continue throughout spring 2019. The digital buy was enhanced with Google AdWords and had a strong presence at local newspaper site ADN.com.

Lucky Charms is the cereal that’s packed with marshmallows shaped like pink hearts, yellow moons and green clovers. The new Magical Unicorn was developed and a bit of a big deal. But, when we looked to target millennials, we realized the shape wasn’t really as big of a deal as the marshmallows. And, truth be told, it didn’t really look like a unicorn. So we just played up the news in a candid and fun way: Now with These! Our executions brought this shape to life with a graphic animation style our target could appreciate.

Despite the shocking statistics that every third woman in Bulgaria has been a victim of violence and the escalation of female murders in recent months (35 killed by their male partner only in 2018), there is a lack of communication against gender based and domestic violence, and prevention is the most important weapon against this pressing problem.

The Love Errors campaign focuses on the most common delusions about love. Its aim is to motivate young women and girls to recognize early signs of violence and protect themselves.

Looking for love, girls tend to justify or conceal, ignore or accept the first signs of violence. They excuse words and actions in the name of saving their relationship. A series of 20 illustrations and statements expose those most common clichés that justify violence. The answer to those delusions is: This is not love. This is violence.

www.loveerrors.bg
www.facebook.com/LoveErrors.BFW
www.instagram.com/loveerrors_bg/