Mission Driven
Brand Communications

Community Progress Council (CPC) faced a difficult issue; poverty affected a substantial portion of the population but was not properly understood by all citizens, especially the policy decision makers. CPC needed to shift public awareness efforts in order to affect policy change, funding sources and community support. The social detriments of poverty, what it takes to break the cycle of poverty, and the efforts needed to achieve self-sufficiency were relatively unknown to a large portion of the community due to stigmatization. CPC enlisted Gavin to advance understanding of the organization’s mission and purpose, destigmatize issues relating to poverty and improve the brand’s overall ability to engage influential audiences that could affect needed change.

As the agency of record, Gavin crafted a strategy utilizing guerilla marketing tactics combined with public relations and sophisticated creative solutions across digital and traditional media to generate interest and action. Leveraging a professionally facilitated one-day poverty simulation, Gavin coordinated an event for more than 200 community leaders to partake in a hands-on exercise to role play the lives of those living in poverty – something that had never been done before in the market. The results were truly a breakthrough with a majority of regional media attending – producing several days of coverage, followed by meetings with influencers and stakeholders.

What We Did

Branding
Public Relations
Crisis Communications
Internal Communications
Media Buying
Social Media
Video
Creative Services
Digital Services

Continuing on the momentum, Gavin facilitated a complete internal communications effort to mobilize employees into ambassadors. As efforts continued, Gavin presented a groundbreaking, conversation-starting campaign under the title: I AM PROGRESS, to deliver a bold regional campaign that brought forth unexpected faces in the community who had lived in poverty at some point in their life. A major achievement for the campaign was that it resulted in unsolicited conversations on funding and partnership that CPC hadn’t had before and increased agreement on strategic support.