To drive awareness and engagement for HBO’s Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children, we sought to engage prominent African American artists to create unique art series entitled Pieces of Atlanta. The art symbolized the indelible impact the killings had on the families and the community at large in Atlanta. The series featured five artists who each created a signature piece that focused on one of the five core themes of the film:
Atlanta as a Black mecca
The innocence of childhood
Communal Impact
Family and Motherhood
Today’s Missing and Murdered
The signature artworks were shared socially by the artists and our partner – Dope Black Art. Additionally, to drive social engagement and chatter, we engaged six social influencers to share their personal experiences with the film. We also engaged influencers like Atlanta radio personality Frank Ski who had personal connections to the story and the impact it had on the community.
We adopted a dual pronged strategy for this project: 1) Partnered with artists to create signature works that embody the five pillars of the film 2) Engaged influencers to reflect on how they personally related to the story and how this tragedy impacted the community as a whole. In partnership with Dope Black Art, Allied activated 5 artists to create artwork and post onto their social platforms as part of our “Pieces of Atlanta” series. The artists included Fahamu, Charmaine Minniefield, Sheila Bright, Chuck City, and Amena Brown. Every Friday for five weeks we released a new art piece that coincided with the theme of the episodes of the docuseries.
Fahamu’s piece, Prayer Warrior Egungun spoke of the innocence of the lost children. The Prayer Warrior Egungun offers protection and healing with the hopes it will bring some peace to the families of the missing and murdered as well as the city of Atlanta.
Charmaine’s piece, A Mothers’ Prayer for the Children, centered a traditional African-American worship ritual as a visual modern day prayer. This piece served as a symbol of peace and reflection for the families and communities affected by this grave period in our city’s history.
Chuck’s piece, Sons of Atlanta, represented the heart and soul of the city of Atlanta and the faces of today’s missing and murdered children who often go overlooked in the media.
Sheila’s piece, The Rebirth of Us, honored families whose children disappear from their mothers. Mothers represent a circle of closeness and protection within our neighborhoods. However, that circle was broken when these Black bodies were taken from their mothers. The two sunflowers represent the two young girls and the surrounding flowers represent the boys whose lives were taken in this tragedy.
Amena’s piece, A Ritual of Remembering, closed out the series called for us to continue to call for justice and may these words bring healing even as healing is a work that seems to never quite finish itself.
In total, the art posts generated a potential reach of 3.3M and generated 18.8K social engagements.
In addition to the art, we activated several influencers for the #ItCouldHaveBeenMe campaign. Those influencers included April Reign, Opal Tometi, Rachel Cargle, Raquel Harper, and Rosario Dawson. Each influencer was asked to share a photo of themselves from when they were in between the ages 8-12 to symbolize that it could have been them who were taken away from their families and an amazing life they could have lived. Additionally, each week, we activated 1-3 influencers to post animated fact cards provided by HBO to drive tune-in to each episode. By doing so, we were able to keep the audience engaged for all 5 documentary episodes.
Lastly, throughout all episodes of Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children, Eunique Jones Gibson hosted three intimate conversations, entitled HBO Docs Clubs, where guests like Fank Ski talked about their personal connection to the series.
This campaign generated 4.2M+ impressions and 31K+ social engagements across all four pillars of this campaign. Outside of the social metrics, we were able to give a voice and life to the victims of a horrendous tragedy through art.
