W3 Gold Award Winner
Webby Anthem Award Silver Winner:
IVMF @ Syracuse University
IVMF wanted to enact policy change for veterans issues from the grassroots. Their goal was to mobilize everyday people, who might zero exposure to the military, get them to care about the issues, and then ask them to engage with politicians and lawmakers to demand support for veterans.
The campaign’s success relied on
turning a complex policy agenda into
visual systems and stories that cut above social media noise and created the foundation for IVMF’s communication strategy.
Social cards
The multi-phase campaign kicked off with a series of 8 social cards. The goal was to exceed the standard for design in the veterans and policy space. These shouldn’t look like a PSA or political ad - users know what those are and are suspicious.
Our creative would elevate the format AND still achieve the strategic goals to:
Reach our key audience with simple messages that drive action
Obtain insights about what messaging appeals to audiences that we can apply to the rest of the campaign
Begin building a movement and engaging with early campaign advocates and evangelists
Our visual system uses two workhorse typefaces to establish credibility and brass-tacks tone, and one hand-drawn, calligraphic type to remind us of the humans at the center of the policy. The artwork was designed to evoke memory and feeling. And while IVMF did not want these to be overtly branded, we used color to gently link to IVMF’s brand identity.
Content for every target
Our campaign-which ran on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter- targeted four personas and customized messaging, copy, and visual systems for each:
General Americans: The 85% of Americans who are not aware of their personal connection to the military. The intersectional issues that matter to them are the economy, healthcare, immigration, and climate
Military-Connected: Americans who have a personal connection to the military and an affinity for veterans’ issues
Business Leaders: They have the ability to affect change in the lives of veterans through employment
opportunities and want to champion diversity, equity, and inclusion as an accelerator of business success
Community Leaders: They work in the grassroots, are politically active, and deeply engage with causes they care about
Video series
In the early days of video pre-production, the COVID-19 pandemic began. It caused us to scrap our intended creative and forced us to re-think how we could authentically tell these stories in a way that met the strategy brief.
I shifted the campaign to embrace two styles of UGC (User Generated Content).
One video would rely on sound design and bold, aerial footage. The aim was to retain a high quality of footage and adopt the tone of a manifesto video.
The other video would adopt a lo-fi look-one that didn’t shy away from the scrappy, youthful look of social videos. Our hunch was that there were unique audiences for both, and we could be highly targetted in our (revised) media distribution strategy.
Good news - we were right :) Stay tuned for our third and final video, which will launch in March 2021.
The team
Creative Director: Jessica Lacombe
Designers: Anna Varshavsky, Nina Raj
Ad and social copy: Jessica Lacombe, Anthony Smith
Video Producers: Kashi Somers, Amelia Tovey
Video Editors: Drew Blatman, Alex Ramsey
Motion Graphics: Nina Raj
Video Assistant Editor: Nina Thomas
Casting assistant: Joshua Bone
Audience Growth/Media Strategy: Caitlin Duffy