Get the Lead Out.
Turning a Serious Health Issue Into an Engaging Community Campaign.
Creative Direction | Design | Web | Social | Video | PR
BABY BACK INC. supports community-based health and human services, helping connect individuals and families with resources that can improve their health, independence and overall quality of life.
Through available grant funding, the organization had an opportunity to raise awareness around a particularly important issue in Central New York: childhood lead poisoning. The challenge was finding a way to communicate the seriousness of lead exposure without creating a campaign that felt overly clinical, complicated or easy to ignore.
That is where our creative team came in.
Building a Campaign Designed to Educate and Engage
Working alongside another creative strategist, I helped develop the overarching campaign concept around the idea that protecting children from lead requires everyday superheroes willing to help "get the lead out."
From there, I led the development of the campaign's visual direction, creating a bold, colorful comic book-inspired aesthetic designed to immediately capture attention while making an important public health message feel approachable for families.
The project grew into a fully integrated campaign. I helped develop the initiative name, secured the campaign domain and created the logo and visual identity. I designed and developed the campaign landing page, wrote the website copy and extended the brand across paid social advertising, organic social graphics, posters, flyers and other outreach materials.
At the center of the campaign was an interactive educational quiz that I designed and built using an engagement platform available through our company. I developed the questions, created the accompanying visuals and built the conditional logic and scoring system behind the experience. Rather than simply entering a giveaway, participants needed to demonstrate that they had actually engaged with and learned from the content before becoming eligible to win.
Working alongside our legal team, I also helped establish the contest rules, eligibility requirements and winner-selection process, ultimately awarding eight participants prizes of up to $1,000.
To bring the campaign to life visually, we organized a professional photo and video shoot in Syracuse featuring local children dressed in branded shirts and superhero capes. I helped coordinate the production, directed the creative approach and worked with members of my team who handled filming and video editing. I also scripted the campaign video and sourced the child voiceover talent used to help tell the story.
To expand the campaign beyond paid media, I wrote a press release and supported outreach efforts that helped generate additional attention throughout the Central New York community.
Results
The goal of the campaign was not simply to generate impressions. We wanted families to actively engage with the material, learn about the dangers of lead exposure and better understand the steps they could take to help protect their children.
Our goal was to generate 200 completed educational quizzes.
More than 350 people participated.
The campaign exceeded its engagement goal by more than 75%, generated meaningful buzz throughout the community and earned coverage from multiple local news outlets, extending its reach beyond the original paid media investment.
Most importantly, hundreds of people spent time actively learning about childhood lead poisoning and the steps families can take to reduce their risk.
For me, this project represents what I enjoy most about creative work: taking an important message that could easily be overlooked and finding a way to turn it into something people actually want to engage with. From concept development and branding to interactive strategy, copywriting, digital experience, production and campaign execution, it was an opportunity to bring together nearly every aspect of the creative process around work that had a meaningful purpose.