School shootings are a heavy subject. So it’s understandable that many people (even if they agree with the message) choose to block or skip anti-gun violence PSAs. We decided on a different approach: use comedians to spread our message. By using comedians with a large social media presence (a total of 20.4 million followers) we managed to reach a much larger (and younger) audience of people who could benefit from hearing this message, but might normally avoid it.

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.

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

Enlist the world’s best comedians to show that threats of violence are anything but a joke.

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To jolt people to reverse their mindset and reject excuses that keep them from speaking up, we needed an emotional gut punch. To do this, we transported viewers to the familiar setting of stand-up comedy shows, then hijacked the shows with the devastating reality of school shootings.

We asked 9 famous comedians to incorporate real threats made by school shooters into their comedy sets. At first, people thought these threats were the setup for a joke––but it soon became clear they were anything but funny. The film ends by connecting each threat heard earlier to the schools devastated by the shootings.

By creating emotional breakthrough and delivering a concrete action––to always report threats of violence––we empowered viewers to believe they can prevent school shootings.

We uncovered a glaring statistic that sparked our strategy. In 80% of school shootings, at least one other person has direct knowledge of the attacker’s plans.

This led to a series of breakthroughs:

We have been educating people on the warning signs for years, but just recognizing them isn’t enough to prevent school shootings.

School shootings are at an all-time high, but if 80% of perpetrators’ plans are known, countless shootings could be prevented if warnings were simply reported.

Looking at the bystander effect, we learned it’s human nature to use excuses and rationalizations to wave away our fears, despite the fact that staying silent can result in the scariest consequences of all.

We aimed to tackle one of the most common excuses people make instead of speaking up: that the person making the threat is “just joking.”

“Just Joking” was launched on Morning Joe on MSNBC on 27 September 2023, and then appeared on a range of different TV channels, including Fox, ABC and NBC. We also asked well-known comedians (including the comedians in this PSA) to share it on their social media. In all, it received a total of 1.2B media impressions.

“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.