Years of gun violence and failed reform have taken an emotional toll on Americans, creating an attitude of defeat. So, simply telling parents to imagine their child dying in a school shooting isn’t enough to spur action.

Sandy Hook Promise (SHP) needed a new approach which was non-political and accessible to all Americans. To convince the jaded public that real change is possible, SHP decided to help Americans know the signs and deliver actionable steps they can take immediately. Our films have consistently broken through to make viewers see they can prevent school shootings, by knowing the signs.

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.

In the US, gun violence is the leading cause of death among children. But despite the size and urgency of the situation, Americans have become numb to gun violence. News of new school shootings hardly fazes people - many don’t even make the news. So, straightforward comms no longer work. We needed a key to break through emotionally: the juxtaposition of innocence and students’ reality of gun violence.

Each film represented a different aspect of innocence in American culture:

Back-to-school shopping is a widely known and practiced tradition every Fall - a huge cultural moment.

Katy Perry’s widely recognized song “Teenage Dream” represents the carefree teen spirit that should be central to the American high school experience.

Stand-up comedy is a beloved form of entertainment, and has proliferated even further on social media through comedians’ reels – a format similar to the “Just Joking” film.

SHP’s primary goal is to protect children from gun violence. But we faced two significant barriers to motivating our audience: 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 caused many people to switch off from it totally, seeing moves to prevent school shootings as a political push.

SHP needed a drastic approach to create a real mindset shift – and make people realize they CAN do something to prevent gun violence.

So SHP’s objective became clear. 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.

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.

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.

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.

Despite the size and urgency of the gun violence epidemic, it has been impossible to generate bipartisan support for common sense gun laws that could prevent school shootings. Given this lack of political action, the most effective way to prevent school shootings is at the individual level.

By grounding ourselves in deep, universal human insight, we’re able to rise above the tit-for-tat of polarization, breaking through emotionally and giving our viewers a concrete action to take: Know the Signs.

By landing with this concrete, simple step any individual can take, we convert the emotional power of our advertising into action year after year.

In an era of seemingly intractable, systemic social issues, public good marketing is most effective when it clearly communicates to individuals that they, too, can be effective – when it restores our faith in our own ability to create change and gives us easily actionable ways to enact it.