The PSA was shot to look like a compilation of outtakes from stand-up comedy specials. It was launched on Morning Joe on MSNBC, and then appeared on a range of different TV channels, including Fox, ABC and NBC.

Most advertising isn’t life-or-death. This work is. In the US, gun violence is the leading cause of death among children. But despite the size and urgency of the situation, it has been impossible to generate bipartisan support for common sense gun laws that could prevent school shootings. This lack of political action has made it so that the only way to prevent school shootings is at the individual level – by learning the warning signs, taking threats seriously, and speaking up.

To ensure a foothold in the fast-moving cultural conversation, at a time when it’s more difficult than ever to compete for social media users’ attention, we mimicked a beloved form of entertainment: stand-up comedy reels. The final result of “Just Joking” was a film that imitates these comedy reels, but takes a chilling turn – to show people that threats of violence should always be taken seriously.

80% of school shooters tell someone about their plans. But people tend to not take these threats seriously; they think the person making them is “just joking.” To highlight the absurdity of treating threats of violence as “jokes,” we asked comedians to incorporate real threats made by school shooters into their stand-up comedy sets. We then filmed the results. At first the audiences thought these threats were the set-up for a joke–but as the threats became more explicit and overt, it became clear they were anything but funny. Watching the audience’s reactions, we see them shift from amusement, to confusion, to unease as it begins to dawn on them what’s really happening.

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 empower those who feel helpless to stop preventable gun violence.

Our objectives:

Capture the attention of Americans who don’t want to think of our gun violence problem anymore

Open the minds of those who feel powerless so they engage with the issue again

Prevent school shootings and save children’s lives

We set off with SHP to find the message America needed to hear most.

“Just Joking” successfully captured attention, garnering 1.2B media impressions, including 500M video views and 128+ media placements––all with $0 media spend.

This helped us emotionally breakthrough at scale, beating benchmarks for engaged attention by a whopping 60%.

And we opened minds to engage with prevention efforts:

We drove action from viewers: 413% increase in unique website users in the first three days vs. non-campaign period, boosting program engagement and downloads of our Know The Signs guide.

A RealEyes study confirmed a mindset shift after viewing: 95% said they were now interested in learning the signs that could help prevent violence, and we created a 61% lift in believing there are steps an individual can take to prevent gun violence.

Since the film’s launch, SHP has prevented its 16th planned school shooting, thanks to individuals who spotted a threat of violence and spoke up.