Process

Veteran suicide is a growing crisis in our country. Past ad campaigns were built on the idea that if people knew the statistics, they'd donate.

But we surmised that the numbers could be having the opposite effect of creating emotional distance. The audience was overwhelmed into inaction by statistics that were heartbreaking but didn't do anything to help them relate, on a human level, to how warriors felt.

Digging into research, we learned that one major risk factor for veteran suicide is survivor guilt. That's something everyone can understand in their own life, from an accident avoided to an illness survived.

We found the story of a warrior with survivor guilt and created a concept in paid social first. A strong image with text overlay, 125 characters of primary text and 25 character-CTA seemed like enough canvas to tell our story effectively.

Animated display offered a more dynamic creative space than static social. But far less room for copy. Here we had to hone the concept down to its emotional core.

Leaning into a close-up of the image to bring people face-to-face with the pain in the warrior's eyes, we distilled his suffering into one relatable frame: He was alive simply because of where he sat in the vehicle that day.

Learnings

This creative worked well in display but not on social. And better in display than native.

Did creatives on difficult topics benefit from less content? Should we use static v. animated for this kind of content?

We discovered a new formula to test: >movement + <reaction time = >CTR.