As US schools reopened in fall 2021 after 18 months of being closed, parents and politicians were excited to see kids to return to normality. Sandy Hook Promise wanted to jolt America out of its comfort zone and remind people that normality for teenagers today means living with the reality of school shootings.

To demonstrate how the carefree innocence of teenage life has been destroyed by the reality of gun violence, Sandy Hook Promise partnered with pop megastar Katy Perry and a brave team of eleven school shooting survivors to rerecord Perry’s famous ode to adolescence, “Teenage Dream.” Juxtaposed against the teenage survivors, the context of the original upbeat lyrics changes and begin to eerily describe their traumatic experiences of gun violence. When the song ends, we then reveal the tragic stories of these teenage survivors. After watching the PSA, viewers could go to Sandyhoolpromise.org to watch individual interviews with each survivor to learn more about their tragic stories and how their teenage dreams were changed forever by school shootings.

As a non-profit with limited budget resources, Sandy Hook Promise’s primary strategy for its PSA campaigns is to create huge cultural impact and incite conversation around youth gun violence. This relies on creating social videos that get heavily shared. For this campaign, Sandy Hook Promise partnered with pop megastar Katy Perry but used her cultural influence in an unexpected way – by twisting her well-loved pop anthem, ‘Teenage Dream’ to show the reality of teenage life for school shooting survivors. As one of the most followed celebrities on social media, Katy Perry has the mass appeal Sandy Hook Promise needed to reach a diverse audience. Most anti-gun violence campaigns only speak to those who already oppose guns, but we wanted to reach gun owners too and show that teenagers of all demographics are affected by gun violence.

Eleven survivors from different school shootings spoke or sang the lyrics to Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream in a social video that was simultaneously launched online and posted by Katy Perry on all her social channels (Twitter / IG / Facebook). The campaign was launched on the week of Sep 13, 2021, to coincide with students returning for in person lessons (after 18 months of being closed.) The supporting Sandy Hook Promise website featured bios and heart-breaking video interviews with each of the teenage survivors featured in the social video.

The campaign achieved 355 million media impressions and earned media equal to $3.5 million in value. Media outlets that picked up the campaign ranged from mainstream news sites / TV channels including Good Morning America, People, MSNBC and The Washington Post to music focused outlets including Billboard, MTV, Heavy and iHeart Radio. In addition to Katy Perry, the campaign was shared by celebrities and public figures including Trevor Noah, Mark Ruffalo, Katie Couric, Monica Lewinsky, Jim Acosta and multiple senators. In 24 hours, the PSA had been watched over a million times. The campaign also converted into real action, leading to 92K visitors to Sandyhookpromise.org where people could learn the warning signs to prevent future school shootings. Most impressively, we achieved this mass reach and expanded SHP’s supporter base, all with a $0 paid media budget.