We needed to create a statewide campaign to increase early childhood enrollment with an Illinois Cares for Kids campaign to highlight the variety of resources, funding and support available in both English and Spanish. This multilingual campaign needed to help Illinois families gain access to early education and childcare. We reimagined a Nat King Cole song, employed the original illustrations of an Illinois artist and muralist, and recorded two celebrated Illinois vocalists. The goal of this emotional, celebratory campaign was to increase traffic to the Illinois Cares for Kids resource page, destigmatize asking for help with childcare, and overcome the barriers of reaching an audience not easily found through traditional or digital advertising due to socio-economic challenges.
We developed a multi-channel, awareness-driving campaign that built trust among Illinois parents & families in need through emotional, celebratory storytelling. Many factors can dictate the need for assistance with childcare and early education.
Our targeting strategy utilized a combination of broad targeting (ie: broadcast, out of home advertising), focused digital efforts with a concentration on lower income brackets and zip codes to drive statewide awareness of the IllinoisCaresforKids.org URL.
The assets featured a cast of vibrant, endearing, geometrically-shaped parent, kid and resource staff characters. Our campaign’s centerpiece was a 30-second animated video, and grew to include…
This exhaustive channel exposure guaranteed this irresistible campaign was seen by all despite challenges with our audience's access to traditional media.
The Illinois Cares for Kids campaign was able to generate a 1,694% increase in website traffic to the IllinoisCaresforKids.org webpage, designed to link parents and guardians to accessible, affordable childcare related resources. Alongside our direct KPI of awareness & reach, we also discovered that enrollment for several state funded educational programs returned back to pre-pandemic levels.
