Communities In Schools: What We Are Made Of

In 2018, GMMB launched the What We Are Made Of campaign for our client Communities In Schools. We partnered with pop artist Jason Mecier, who created massive three-dimensional mosaic portraits of seven Communities In Schools students from across the country to show how complex and multidimensional today’s students really are.

We showed off these incredible works of art in multiple ways, including via an interactive scavenger hunt at SXSW EDU 2019 that I conceptualized and helped execute at the Austin Convention Center.

We put photos of items found in each student’s mosaic portrait around the convention center and encouraged conference attendees to take photos of the items and post to social media for the chance to win prizes. Over the course of the three-day conference, the #MosaicChallenge generated a total of 500,000 organic impressions among educators, school administrators, and their followers.

I also helped create the What We Are Made Of microsite and augmented reality mobile app. We debuted the AR app at SXSW EDU 2019 to great success — the #MosaicChallenge drove a ton of traffic to our booth, where we were able to encourage hundreds of people to download the app and try it out on the real-life portraits.

Here are some videos of the students seeing their portraits for the first time and talking about their experiences with Communities In Schools. These get me teary-eyed every time.

And here are some examples of ads we ran across the country to raise awareness of Communities In Schools and their mission: Instagram video ads, a 30-second PSA for broadcast, static social media ads, and animated banners.

Across all of our advertising, we delivered more than 22 million impressions, 53,000 clicks, and 54,000 video completions —exceeding benchmarks and driving the traffic, engagement, and lead generation our client was aiming for.

Go Beyond PSA

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on at-risk students, Communities In Schools asked us to create a 30-second PSA showing how they’re empowering kids to go beyond the barriers they face. The voiceover was performed by Rey Saldaña, President and CEO of Communities In Schools — and a former CIS student when he was growing up in San Antonio. Scripting this video, directing Rey, and putting all the pieces together to create the following was a privilege.

Creative Director: Ben Hawkins

Associate Creative Director/Art Director: Phillip Allen

Senior Copywriter: Laura Orozco

Creative Technologist: Christopher Shannon

Editor: Josh Steiner