Students today face unprecedented mental health challenges, with more than half of parents in Michigan expressing concern about their children's emotional well-being. In response to this growing crisis, Priority Health, a Michigan-based nonprofit health insurance provider, teamed up with Canines for Change, a nonprofit specializing in the training and placement of facility dogs, to create the Priority Pups® program. Priority Pups offers in-school mental health support through the unique bond between children and facility dogs.
Since launching in 2023, the program has had a clear positive impact, but the need is greater than the number of dogs available. Because of the significant logistics and expense involved in training and placing dogs in every school, Priority Health sought to move faster to provide support and relief for students, their caregivers, and educators. Determined to make a larger impact, they aimed to raise more widespread awareness, and adoption, of the powerful social-emotional benefits of support animals, helping foster environments where students can truly thrive and learn.
The vision was clear: to expand education, awareness and validate the behavioral health needs of children and their caretakers. Priority Health, in partnership with Canines for Change, sought to publish a children’s mental health book that not only educates but also empowers young minds to understand and express their emotions, and provide the tools for them to build emotional resilience. The book is for parents and teachers that have students with intense behaviors. Michigan schools are increasing in behavioral outbursts and mental health needs. We wanted a book that addresses this challenge in an informative, relatable and impactful way.
We collaborated with our medical professionals, experts from Canines for Change, educators and illustrators to ensure the content and visuals were authentic and would resonate with children and parents alike. The end result was Frida’s Fireworks – a bilingual children’s book authored by psychiatrist Dr. Charletta Dennis (Priority Health) and school psychologist Dr. Nikki Brown (Canines for Change). The story follows Frida, an anxious kindergartner who learns self-regulation tools through her friendship with Scout, a real-life Priority Pup who impacts hundreds of kids a year in Muskegon.
Plan of Action & Execution
We first leveraged the expertise of Dr. Dennis and Dr. Brown to understand the unique emotional needs of children across various age groups, and from there concept a kid-centric story and finalize a manuscript. We worked with an illustrator to create visually engaging, fun and diverse characters (inspired by real life participants in the Priority Pups program) that would reflect the wide range of emotions children experience.
The book's development went through multiple stages of feedback from Priority Health leadership/medical experts, Canines for Change partners and children in our target age range to ensure the content was scientifically proven, age-appropriate and relatable.
Cross-Channel Launch Strategy
We knew that a successful launch of Frida’s Fireworks required reaching educators, families and healthcare professionals across multiple touchpoints. Our cross-channel strategy was designed to maximize visibility, timed to be executed in May in observance of National Mental Health Awareness Month in the U.S. Our launch strategy included a robust communications plan across local/trade earned media outreach, paid media sponsorships, social media and community engagement events, such as pop-up visits over the course of 6+ months to key events/programs that promoted early literacy. Our goal for these in-person community engagements was to engage local families around the mental health topic, donate books, and even coordinate live readings from the authors.
Challenges
The most significant challenge we faced was making a complex and sensitive subject accessible to children without oversimplifying the issue or causing distress for families. We spent months refining our language and illustrations to strike the right balance between being informative and compassionate. Standing out in a crowded marketplace was also tough. We had to be selective with our media outreach – prioritizing quality over quantity when it came to our reach, ensuring our message was getting in front children and their caregivers who would benefit from the book’s tools most.
Building on the results from Priority Health’s Priority Pups program over the last year, including proven reduced behavioral challenges and improved reading & math scores, we’ve had complementary successes following the launch of Friday’s Fireworks.
Frida's Fireworks has generated strong engagement since May:
Consumer testing of Priority Pups ad outperformed competitive set and showed 61% main takeaway as compassion, 10+ point increase in brand familiarity, +5% increase in market share, +62% increase in conversions with 17% decrease in YoY ad spend.
