A Community that Cares

Vancouver-based grassroots community org A Community that Cares approached DDB for help in combatting growing violence, especially involving teens in gangs. The budget was small – only $16,000 – but the impact had to be big.

The agency had two objectives: in the short term, to start a dialogue with teens to shift their ideas about gang life; in the long term, to get the attention of the public and politicians to see gang violence as an important issue.

With little existing research, DDB first conducted one-on-one sessions with current and past gang members (sometimes in their homes), the RCMP Integrated Anti-Gang Task Force, student counselors and crime journalists. They discovered that teens were most attracted to the perception of glamour and easy money in gangs. However, that was quickly replaced by the reality of running from police and violence from rival gangs and even their peers. This was the basis of the insight and resulting campaign: that joining a gang is like contracting a fatal disease.

A 30-second film aired on networks, cinema and YouTube showing smallpox, HIV and cancer cells morphing into gang members under a microscope. The underlying message: gang life kills. As well, the agency created fake gang recruitment posters advertising the stayout.ca website, where they could learn more about the reality of being in a gang.

Guerrilla outreach included stencilled phone numbers and the URL on bus stops, schoolyards and washrooms. When called, the phone numbers provided realistic audio recordings of crimes that took place at the callers’ locations. Fake recruitment posters in skateboard parks and community centres also played on this theme. Those who called the numbers displayed in the posters found out that the gang members had met with unsavoury outcomes. Actual spent bullet casings engraved with the stayout.ca URL were strewn around target locations such as skate parks and other hangouts, and were also distributed to major media outlets.

The campaign was covered by major networks including Global and CBC, as well as national newspapers, generating over seven million total impressions. It also earned one of the highest MRP (Media Rating Point) scores in the country with a cost per contact of $0.00270, a 3.8 tone of coverage measure and an overall MRP media score of 81%.