After 20 children and 6 staff were brutally killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in 2012, two grieving parents came together to turn tragedy into transformation. They founded Sandy Hook Promise on a mission to protect children from gun violence.

Our task was to move people to support this mission in a country where the conversation about gun violence prevention had turned into a political debate.

Our objectives:

Save lives & prevent school shootings.

Capture the nation’s attention.

Emotionally resonate (across the political spectrum).

Pass legislation that could prevent future school shootings.

We set off with SHP in search of an effective solution capable of cutting through the stark political polarization that had frozen the gun violence prevention category.

Know The Signs

A series of films designed to move people to learn the warning signs: by transporting viewers to a place of innocence, then hijacking it with the devastating reality of gun violence.

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“Back to School Essentials” subverted the innocent back-to-school shopping tradition with students’ terrifying “new normal.” Instead of their intended use, school supplies were used as protection in a school shooting.

“Teenage Dream” delivered Katy Perry’s teen anthem through the voices of school shooting survivors, subverting America’s image of students’ carefree high school years with students’ devastating reality of gun violence trauma.

“Just Joking” featured famous comedians delivering real threats from school shooters in their stand-up comedy sets, to show that threats of violence are never a joke.

And each time we created that emotional breakthrough, we delivered an action for our audience to take: learn the warning signs at SandyHookPromise.org.

With gun violence rising to the #1 killer of kids in the US, we knew the problem was urgent. We couldn’t wait around for change to come to us.

And as other gun violence prevention organizations tried and failed to enact political solutions, we learned a non-political approach was needed so nobody could argue with it.

Extensive research taught us the tools to prevent school shootings are right in front of us. In almost all school shooting cases, perpetrators display identifiable “warning signs” when they are planning a violent act. We needed to show America that school shootings are preventable when you know what you’re looking for.

These breakthroughs gave us a clear strategy to spur the defeated public: Give everyday Americans the tools to prevent school shootings, and show them they can have life-saving impact.

Background & Context

After 20 children and 6 staff were brutally killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting in 2012, two grieving parents came together to turn tragedy into transformation. They founded Sandy Hook Promise on a mission to protect children from gun violence.

Our task was to move people to support this mission in a country where the conversation about gun violence prevention had turned into a political debate. Because the conversation around guns is so polarizing, it is extremely difficult for organizations explicitly in favor of “gun control” to win favor in more conservative circles.

We set off with SHP in search of an effective solution capable of cutting through this stark political polarization that had frozen the gun violence prevention category.

Creative Challenge

SHP faced two significant challenges to motivating our audience.

First, the endless news cycle of mass shootings with no real change has made gun violence – even against youth – dehumanized. It has created a learned helplessness among Americans, who assume they can’t do anything to prevent school shootings.

Secondly, gun violence has become a political tool. This has caused many people to switch off from it totally, seeing moves to prevent school shootings as a political push.

SHP needed a drastically different approach to create a real mindset shift – and make people realize they CAN do something to prevent gun violence: we needed to push against the never-ending doom cycle Americans live through, by showing them that any individual can save lives – giving them actionable steps to make change, in a non-political way.

Our solution

We discovered that in most school shooting cases, the perpetrators display identifiable warning signs. These warning signs were the key to our solution:

Know The Signs

A series of emotionally moving (and politically neutral) films, each one a call to action to learn the warning signs to prevent school shootings.

Execution

Each film moved our audience to learn the warning signs of gun violence by breaking through emotionally in a shocking way: by juxtaposing what people find innocent and familiar with the reality of gun violence.

“Back to School Essentials” mimicked back-to-school shopping advertising, subverting the innocent tradition with students’ terrifying “new normal.” Viewers soon realized the new items weren’t for their intended use. They were tools for students to protect themselves in a school shooting.

“Teenage Dream” delivered Katy Perry’s hit song “Teenage Dream” through school shooting survivors, subverting America’s image of students’ carefree high school years with students’ devastating reality of gun violence trauma.

“Just Joking” featured famous comedians delivering threats of violence in their stand-up comedy sets, subverting people’s comedic expectations by replacing punchlines with real threats from school shooters.

And each time we created that emotional breakthrough, we delivered an action for our audience to take: learn the warning signs so you can prevent school shootings.

We robustly delivered on our objectives.

Our films successfully captured attention: 5.5B media impressions, 578M video views, and 5000+ media reports across the three films, with no more than $100k total media spend. They drove significant engagement with our programming, including an increase of 1M+ Know The Signs training participants.

And while each film performed great on their own, the real results come from all aspects of SHP over time. Our films made SHP’s unparalleled life-saving impact possible:

226,000+ tips anonymously reported

611 confirmed lives saved with crisis intervention

239 acts of violence with a weapon prevented

16 planned school shootings prevented

And by creating films that appeal to both democrats and republicans, SHP has generated support for legislation that can prevent school shootings, including the 2022 Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (the first major US gun law in 30 years), further boosting our life-saving impact.