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SERVICES PROVIDED: CREATIVE SERVICES | DIGITAL PSA NETWORK
PARTNER: NEW YORK CITY’S MAYOR’S OFFICE WITH DISABILITIES
The New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities (MOPD) ensures that the rights and concerns of the disability community are included in all City initiatives and that City programs and policies address the needs of people with disabilities in all facets of life including transportation, healthcare, housing, education, financial empowerment, and employment.
In New York City, people with disabilities disproportionately suffer from higher unemployment rates and lower incomes. In response, the MOPD created NYC: ATWORK as a business-driven employment program that recruits, pre-screens, and connects New Yorkers with disabilities to job opportunities and internships with established business partners from both the public and private sectors.
MOPD hired F.Y. Eye to produce the first NYC: ATWORK marketing campaign that would raise the program’s organizational profile and increase jobseeker and business participation. As the program’s first marketing investment, F.Y. Eye was tasked with executing a standout campaign in an affordable way that could generate real outcomes to merit future investment in communications.
People with disabilities face pervasive stigmas and deeply seated prejudice despite federal, state, and local laws prohibiting discrimination. Misperceptions and false attitudinal beliefs about employing people with disabilities create major obstacles to employment. Many employers incorrectly assume that people with disabilities are not physically capable of doing the job or are too expensive to accommodate. In reality, when businesses embrace employing people with disabilities, they have higher profitability, better productivity, lower turnover rates, and a competitive advantage in a diverse marketplace.
The goal of this public awareness campaign was to shatter longstanding stereotypes about employees with disabilities. We showcased authentic success stories of New Yorkers with disabilities who were connected to jobs through the NYC: AT WORK program thriving in the workplace from both an employee and employer perspective.
First, F.Y. Eye crafted a persuasive concept: “Hire someone with a disability. It’s just good business.” This framing highlighted the value people with disabilities bring to company culture and the bottom line. The target audiences for the campaign included: small, medium, and large New York businesses, people with disabilities interested in exploring career opportunities, and the general public.
To keep the campaign within budget, F.Y. Eye hired top student talent from our Impact Artist Collective to produce the campaign in an affordable way without sacrificing quality. With MOPD’s guidance and support, F.Y. Eye traveled to participating businesses across the City to capture authentic portraits and action shots of the employees with disabilities winning at work and engaging with their supervisors. Unlike many previous national government campaigns, which often paint people with disabilities as victims or heroes, the visual and verbal narrative F.Y. Eye developed depicted employees with disabilities as strong, capable, and meaningful contributors to the workplace. We also represented the businesses who hired people with disabilities as competitive, smart, and forward thinking.
The campaign was publicized in New York City across a variety of venues, including bus shelters, LinkNYC kiosks, social media and the F.Y. Eye PSA Network—a growing community media cooperative that reaches over 1 million New Yorkers.
F.Y. Eye helped MOPD capture and visually communicate the powerful success stories from NYC: ATWORK in a public awareness campaign reaching New York businesses, New Yorkers with disabilities, and the greater public. During the campaign, visits to the NYC: ATWORK website increase fifty percent. In the four months following the campaign’s launch, the number of engaged prospective job seekers increased by more than 11 percent and business engagement increased by thirteen percent.
“Working with F.Y. Eye exceeded our expectations. The campaign they produced is beautiful, artists were easy to work with, and they were accommodating to our feedback or last minute-changes. Most importantly, they understood the nuances of our work. As our first campaign to capture New Yorkers with disabilities at work, it was imperative for our message to be conveyed in an empowering, accessible, and persuasive way. F.Y. Eye designed a campaign that captured our values and amplified our message,” said Abby Mayerhoff, Program Manager, NYC: ATWORK program at MOPD.
The campaign’s initial success helped the NYC: ATWORK team generate institutional buy-in for future marketing efforts. Furthermore, the evergreen concept and narrative model F.Y. Eye developed will be utilized to capture and share future success stories of this innovative and effective employment program for people with disabilities.
SERVICES PROVIDED: MEDIA PLANNING | MEDIA BUYING | EVENT PROMOTION
PARTNER: THE OPEN SOCIETY FOUNDATION
Sex work is misunderstood, stigmatized, and criminalized in New York as well as in most countries. Labeling sex workers as deviants and denying them basic human rights is counterproductive to their wellbeing and propagates a harmful misrepresentation about the sex work industry and those who serve in it. There are many reasons why people do consensual sex work, and no matter the reason, sex workers deserve equal access to labor rights and protections as well as workplace health and safety standards.
The Open Society Foundations is a nonprofit working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights. One of their important programs focuses on destigmatizing, decarcerating and decriminalizing sex work through education and advocacy. In partnership with the creative visionaries at The Soze Agency, they produced a Sex Workers’ Pop-Up Exhibition that aimed to give sex workers a seat at the table in the conversation about their industry while helping visitors rethink how society defines work.
The Open Society Foundations brought in F.Y. Eye to plan and execute a citywide out-of-home media campaign to raise awareness about the exhibit and to help reduce stigmas that surround sex workers and their communities.
Public opinion about people who provide sexual labor is often informed by longstanding stereotypes that hinder the advancement of progressive regulatory reform. Our challenge was to develop and execute an out-of-home media campaign that would educate a broader audience about the global sex worker movement, amplify the message that sex work is work and drive traffic to the Sex Workers’ Pop Up social media channels and temporary exhibition.
In New York, the major out-of-home media companies controlling transit advertising, outdoor billboard advertising and street advertising are often subject to policies that restrict their ability to disseminate content that may be construed as advocacy and/or solicitation of sex. The Sex Workers’ Pop-Up Exhibition campaign was a delicate subject that touched on both issues. As a result, it was likely to be rejected by media companies with the high-profile inventory needed to generate buzz about the exhibition. F.Y. Eye was tasked with reframing the campaign in a way that would be acceptable to key media partners and negotiating steep discounts to keep the campaign in budget.
F.Y. Eye leveraged our expertise in media planning and our relationships with major media partners to secure premium media real estate at discounted rates to distribute a highly successful advertisement campaign for the Sex Workers’ Pop Up.
First, we crafted a media plan that would spark conversation and attract visitors to the exhibition. We strategized to reach a broad population of New York residents and tourists through a diverse media mix, which included bus shelter displays, interior subway ads, a Times Square billboard, urban panels and our own homegrown community media cooperative—the PSA Network. Then, we worked with Open Society Foundations and the Soze Agency to frame the campaign in a way that would be acceptable to our risk averse media partners and got them onboard.
The multifaceted campaign exposed a new, broader audience to the bold Sex Work is Work message in a variety of different environments in the month leading up to the exhibit. To convert the buzz into attendance, the Open Society Foundations launched three Sex Workers’ Pop-Up social media accounts that linked the informational website to social media and engaged participants and visitors online. Instagram was the strongest performing social media platform due in large part to the excitement and curiosity the subway ads generated.
The Pop-Up proved to be a resounding success. The exhibition was on pace to shatter expectations and welcome over 10k visitors –– before COVID-19 forced an early closure. Our fingerprints can be found on the impressive attendance record.
In under two months, the Instagram page for the Pop-Up accumulated over 3k followers and Instagram stories reached over 17k unique viewers. In total, the Pop-Up’s aggregate social media views across all platforms exceeded 40k impressions in just six weeks.
Our interior subway ads reached nearly 9 million people. Our bus shelter ads reached over 2 million people. Our Times Square Digital ad reached an additional quarter-million. Additionally, donated ad space on the F.Y. Eye PSA Network expanded reach to trusted community-based organizations including: Callen-Lorde, SAGE, Union Community Health Center, Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation Economic Solutions Center and Community Health Action Staten Island.
Media | Impressions | Units | Period |
In-Subway Advertising | 8,690,519 | 1000 | 4 wks |
Urban Panel | 799,132 | 1 | 4 wks |
Bus Shelters | 2,304,581 | 8 | 4 wks |
Digital Times Square Billboard | 275,500 | 1 | 4 wks |
F.Y. Eye PSA Network | 29,265 | 12 | 4 wks |
Based on an in-person survey of hundreds of people who attended the exhibit, we gleaned that 43% of attendees first learned of the Pop-Up from our MTA ads. Another 26% learned of the Pop-Up though social media traffic we helped generate in addition to other digital advertising. In total, our efforts increased attendance to the exhibition by over 69%.
Furthermore, F.Y. Eye was able to save The Open Society Foundations $29,600 in media costs by providing donated ad space and negotiating steep discounts on media inventory from our agency partners.
In the end, this inspirational campaign lifted up the global sex worker movement and humanized the conversation on the sex work industry.
SERVICES PROVIDED: MEDIA PLANNING | CREATIVE SERVICES | DIGITAL PSA NETWORK
PARTNER: Creative Action Network, NYC Census 2020, NYC Department of Sanitation, Sesame Workshop, The Manhattan Borough President’s Office, Wonton Food
Once every ten years, the U.S. Census Bureau is mandated to count every person (citizen and non-citizen) residing in the United States. But the Census is so much more than just a population count. Census information is used to determine how federal funds for public education, infrastructure, and other critical services are allocated. It also determines how many congressional seats every state gets in the House of Representatives as well as how legislative districts are drawn.
Historically, New York City has been undercounted in the Census, which has resulted in chronic gaps in federal funding for essential services and inequitable political representation in Congress. In the 2010 Census, New York lost two congressional seats and over $1.5 billion annually in federal aid. Another undercount of New York’s population, particularly of immigrant communities and communities of color, posed a serious threat to our democracy.
Given the COVID-19 pandemic and political challenges related to who could be counted, expectations were low for Census turnout in 2020. The US government orchestrated one of their largest advertising campaigns in history and F.Y. Eye played an important role in getting out the count in NYC— helping NYC achieve a 61.9% self-response rate. On a shoestring budget, F.Y. Eye led a series of cross-sector partnerships to produce three innovative and effective 2020 Census advertising campaigns.
In addition to NYC’s historic low participation rates in the Census, there were a number of factors that made achieving a complete count in the 2020 Census more challenging. At the start of the 2020 Census count, NYC was the epicenter of the global COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, which upended Census outreach plans and required a monumental shift in strategy. In addition, although US residents could take the 2020 Census online for the first time ever, it was still necessary to communicate this option and to ensure everyone had the knowledge and ability to do so. NYC’s digital divide and the Trump administration’s aggressive attempts to suppress Census participation among undocumented residents further threatened the undercount of vulnerable populations. To make matters worse, deadlines kept changing.
Beyond the political climate and citywide quarantine, our community still faced the most common barriers to Census participation. These included a lack of Census knowledge, privacy concerns, fear of repercussions, and general distrust of government. Organizations around the city were looking for ways to mass communicate Census information with New Yorkers from a distance in order to overcome these barriers.
F.Y. Eye needed to identify pandemic-proof media channels that would capture the attention of New Yorkers throughout every borough safely, effectively, and on a limited budget. The hunt was on to locate unconventional outreach channels that would catch the eyes of New Yorkers at home.
F.Y. Eye spearheaded three imaginative civic engagement campaigns to build awareness, urgency and confidence around the 2020 Census. Each communications strategy was fueled by cross-sector partnerships with trusted messengers and targeted populations at risk of low self-response rates including: families with young children, hard-to-reach communities, and a general audience of New Yorkers dealing with the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To reach families with young children under five, one of the most undercounted populations in the previous Census, F.Y. Eye teamed up with Sesame Workshop, the New York City Department of Sanitation and NYC Census 2020 to produce an ad campaign featuring Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch. This effort encouraged NYC residents to “Make your family count—even the grouches!” The print poster was displayed on the 2,500 sanitation trucks and mechanical brooms that provide services to every New York City neighborhood. At a time when subway and bus ridership was down more than 50 percent, this out-of-the-box marketing strategy proved to be an effective and safe way to reach New Yorkers socially distancing at home, who were still regularly taking their trash out and seeing sanitation trucks in their neighborhoods.
To complement the family-focused sanitation truck PSA, F.Y. Eye developed a second campaign that not only targeted a broad population of residents at home but also supported local restaurants during a difficult economic period. F.Y. Eye organized a unique partnership with Wonton Food and the Manhattan Borough President’s Office to distribute thirteen million special edition fortune cookies with Census messaging in English, Spanish and Chinese to hungry New Yorkers ordering Chinese food takeout throughout the metro area. The slogans printed in the cookies, including “Don’t Count Calories, Be Counted. Census 2020,” and “Eat me. Then be counted. Take the 2020 Census,” came from the winning submissions to F.Y. Eye’s Get-Out-The-Count Census slogan contest.
In the final month of the 2020 Census, F.Y. Eye launched a third campaign that leveraged the power of art and community to motivate struggling New Yorkers in low-income neighborhoods at risk of a severe undercount to participate. F.Y. Eye partnered with Creative Action Network as well as our PSA Network Hosts to distribute posters and postcards in emergency food packages. The winning poster and postcard graphic PSAs were crowdsourced through F.Y. Eye’s 2020 Civic Art Challenge and included attractive designs created by members of the F.Y. Eye Impact Artist Collective. The action-oriented messages were delivered directly to New Yorkers in need frequenting local food pantries at African Services Committee, Center for Family Life, Commonpoint Queens Community Center, Queens Community House and West Side Campaign Against Hunger. The campaign served as a final push to reach the most vulnerable New Yorkers and a reminder that the 2020 Census was a way to secure much-needed federal funding to support public and nonprofit safety net programs.
Check out some of the other work we did to promote the 2020 Census here, including a toolkit for property managers to encourage all residents to be counted.
F.Y. Eye’s innovative advertising solutions reached New Yorkers citywide, generated much-needed motivational buzz around the 2020 Census, and led to strong participation despite all odds. By working with local community and ethnic media, government agencies, nonprofit service providers, advocacy groups, New York-based food manufacturers and local artists, we were able to distribute 2020 Census messaging to every block of New York City with a particular focus on vulnerable districts that were most prone to being undercounted. Messaging was translated in multiple languages and distributed citywide. Further, the campaigns were spotted on influential social media accounts and gained notable media exposure from the likes of Yahoo, Telemundo, Queens Daily Eagle, AMNY, Patch, NextCity, and Harlem World Magazine.
The 2020 NYC self-response rate of 61.9 percent was impressive given the plethora of complicating factors that made this decennial Census count one of the most challenging. This year’s self-response rate was nearly the same as that of 2010, and it was higher than most major U.S. cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, Miami, and Dallas, among others. Notably, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island had better responses than in 2010.
Although there is more work to do to ensure a complete and accurate count in the future, F.Y. Eye in partnership with other nonprofit and government partners helped NYC achieve a greater response rate in 2020 than even the Census Bureau estimated pre-COVID.
SERVICES PROVIDED: CREATIVE SERVICES | COALITION BUILDING | MEDIA PLANNING
PARTNERS: F.Y. EYE-LED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH ABC, AD COLONY, AMPLIFIER ART, BIG BOWL OF IDEAS, BLACKSTAR NEWS, CAIR, CBS, CAROLYN SUZUKI, CELESTE BYERS, COMMON CAUSE, CREATIVE ART WORKS, CURB, DEMOCRACYNYC, DONYC, DOSOMETHING.ORG, DOMINICANOSUSA, ESPN, EMMA WEROWINSKI, EMMIS COMMUNICATIONS, GENERATION CITIZEN, GUMGUM, HEADCOUNT, HORIZON MEDIA, IHEARTRADIO, INTERSECTION, LACI JORDAN, MANDY LICATA, MANNY CANTOR CENTER, NY INTERCONNECT, NYC VOTES, NYCLU, NYN MEDIA, NEW YORK MAGAZINE, NONPROFIT NEW YORK, OUTFRONT, PIX11, PHILANTHROPY NEW YORK, PUNKINFUTZ, QUEENS LATINO, ROCK THE VOTE, ROUNDABOUT THEATER, SAKHI,SHANNON FINNEGAN, TIMES SQUARE ARTS, UNDERTONE, UNIDOSUS, UNION OF CONCERNED SCIENTISTS, UNITED NEIGHBORHOOD HOUSES, UNIVISION, VOCAL-NY, VOTEEARLYNY, VOX, WABC, WEPOWERNYC, WITNESS, YVOTE AND THE YES NETWORK
A strong democracy is dependent on active participation in local, state and federal elections. When we all participate, our government better reflects who we are and the values we stand for. New York consistently ranks as one of the states with the lowest voter turnout rates in the country. In the 2016 general election, New York State ranked 41st in the country for voter turnout. In the 2018 midterm election, voter turnout increased, but still, less than 50% of all eligible voters participated.
The energy around the 2020 Presidential election offered an opportunity to bring new voters, disengaged voters and formerly disenfranchised voters into the democratic process and help New Yorkers start building healthier civic habits that would last a lifetime.
To capitalize on this opportunity, F.Y. Eye led the development and implementation of a pluralistic voter engagement initiative that mobilized New Yorkers of all backgrounds to use their voting power to shape our collective future. F.Y. Eye also leveraged the PSA Network as well as donated media from generous media partners to ensure that everyone had access to information about how and why to vote.
There was no shortage of voter engagement advertising leading up to the 2020 election. In fact, the 2020 election cycle was the most expensive campaign year in our history. However, most of the ads in high circulation were partisan in nature or offered simplistic motivational “VOTE” messages from big name nonprofits aimed at the general population. F.Y. Eye surfaced a need for more nuanced campaigns that both provided specifics on how to vote safely during the pandemic; and came from trusted community messengers targeting voters of all backgrounds.
F.Y. Eye’s mission is to elevate the voices of grassroots organizations that serve communities who are often overlooked in large scale campaigns and to educate New Yorkers on the specifics of policies, issues and programs that fortify democracy and improve quality of life for all. The dearth of both targeted campaigns aimed at politically disengaged populations as well as campaigns with up-to-date pandemic voting guidelines was a challenge F.Y. Eye was primed to solve.
F.Y. Eye identified a variety of voter education topics and voting populations that were not receiving the attention and airtime they deserved. Then, we reached out to leading non-partisan voter engagement nonprofits as well as community-based organizations to partner on a variety of easily downloadable and shareable voting PSA graphics that were housed in the F.Y. Eye voting PSA clearinghouse.
The PSAs we created in partnership with these key allies highlighted a range of voting topics (early voting, absentee voting, make a plan to vote, election day results, discounted rides to polling places, etc.) as well as messages that motivated diverse populations to use their voting power (Korean voters, Chinese voters, Latinx voters, youth voters, formerly incarcerated voters, South Asian voters, Black voters, Muslim voters, voters with disabilities, and more).
In addition to sharing the PSAs publicly on our website, F.Y. Eye distributed select educational and motivational voting messages on our own PSA Network and worked with mission-driven media partners to further amplify unique campaigns throughout New York City and beyond.
Together, with over 60 community partners, F.Y. Eye channeled the power of art and community into a massive voter engagement movement that informed and inspired millions of New Yorkers to take part in the most important election of our lifetime. In sum, F.Y. Eye was able to deliver over 60 million impressions with these impactful voter engagement campaigns and secured over $767,239 in media costs.
F.Y. Eye PSAs were spotted on LinkNYC kiosks, Times Square billboards, local network TV, popular radio stations, premier websites like Rollingstone.com and theVerge.com, popular mobile apps and in New York Magazine. Our efforts contributed to the 7.5% increase in voter turnout—210,000 more New York City votes were cast in the 2020 presidential election compared to the 2016 presidential election.
Next, we will be working with our community of civic minded partners to ensure this positive momentum continues to build on itself and turns into deeper engagement and commitment to our democracy in future local, state and federal elections.
SERVICES PROVIDED: MEDIA PLANNING | MEDIA BUYING
PARTNER: GROWNYC
In midtown Manhattan, you can find a fresh $15 salad every two blocks. In other neighborhoods like East New York, you may have to walk a mile to find a decent carrot. Only 5% of food establishments in East New York are grocery stores, while 27% are fast food restaurants.
New York City’s nonprofit community continues to fight the entrenched food inequity issues that leave many low-income New Yorkers without healthy, cost-effective alternatives to highly processed foods linked to cancer, diabetes and lower IQs in children. GrowNYC’s 50+ Greenmarkets, Youthmarkets and Fresh Food Box sites play a critical role in the solution—ensuring that all New Yorkers, including those that receive Food Stamps, have access to the fresh, nutritious food that they deserve.
Desiring to raise awareness about their new SNAP (formerly Food Stamps) debit-style purchasing program (EBT), GrowNYC tapped F.Y. Eye to help them plan and execute a strategic outreach campaign that successfully nudged low income New Yorkers towards healthier food alternatives.
In the mid-2000s, GrowNYC began a project to offer EBT card access at Greenmarkets throughout New York City. This program came to life in response to the dilemma created by the transition from paper SNAP coupons to electronic debit-style EBT cards, which caused a technological roadblock preventing those receiving SNAP from accessing fresh produce and caused famers’ businesses to suffer. GrowNYC’s goal was to solve the problem for both––allow SNAP-eligible New Yorkers to access their benefits and boost sales for farmers.
Based on our understanding of how to reach New York City’s low-income communities, GrowNYC contacted F.Y. Eye to help develop a robust, targeted communications plan to fully execute their vision of motivating SNAP-eligible New Yorkers to purchase produce at Greenmarkets and boost sales for local farmers. We leveraged our effective out-of-home and print media buy services to connect with GrowNYC’s identified audience. Together, we partnered to launch what would become a multi-year, hyper-targeted advertising campaign aimed to connect SNAP-eligible New Yorkers to the cost-saving programs available at Greenmarkets.
In order to effectively reach GrowNYC’s target audience, we recognized it would be best to zero in on areas with large populations of SNAP-eligible residents that were near Greenmarkets with low EBT card sales. In addition, we disseminated bilingual posters to locations where our target audience were likely to frequent.
Many low-income New Yorkers shop at bodegas and convenience stores, which often don’t sell nutritious foods and offer lower quality foods at higher prices. As such, they were optimal locations to not only spread awareness about the EBT Greenmarkets program, but also to encourage customers to consider healthier and more affordable food choices. To complement this point-of-sale strategy, we chose to advertise in high-traffic bus shelters and subway stations to capture diverse commuters and passersby, further extending our reach into New York’s vulnerable communities.
In the years following GrowNYC’s initial campaign with F.Y. Eye, we sustained our partnership and deepened our impact. We diversified our distribution networks to reach more New Yorkers by placing bilingual ads with our trusted community ethnic newspaper partners, including The Manhattan Times, Metro NY and El Diario. We also continue to disseminate messaging through our Digital PSA Network™ in our host locations such as WIC Centers, community centers, and hospitals.
As a result of GrowNYC’s effective outreach strategies and F.Y. Eye’s multi-year campaign, New Yorkers now have better access to affordable, fresh, high-quality food, and farmers markets continue to thrive. Studies show that SNAP became a critical supplement to farmers who depend on these markets for survival—some farmers reported that EBT sales comprise 50% of their total income.
With information about GrowNYC’s SNAP program at their fingertips, New York’s low-income families have opted to buy produce at Greenmarkets and thus have been eating healthier at a reduced cost for years. The opportunity to access high-quality produce has proven to be a lifeline for them and an essential stepping-stone toward improving overall health within their communities. The residual impact of our campaign continues to grow.
The Greenmarkets SNAP program is a vital resource for New Yorkers and farmers alike. F.Y. Eye simply ensured that those in need were connected to the services they deserve. Each year, we continue to work with GrowNYC to promote this successful and continuously expanding program throughout NYC, targeting the most vulnerable to ensure that all New Yorkers gain access to the freshest most nutritious foods available.
SERVICES PROVIDED: BRAND IDENTITY | LOGO DESIGN | NAMING
PARTNER: NEW YORK ALCOHOL POLICY ALLIANCE
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is by far North America’s largest transportation system, providing 2.73 billion trips per year to about 8.8 million daily riders.
Until recently, New York’s MTA accepted advertising for alcohol on its subway cars, buses, commuter trains, and other properties even though it had banned advertising for tobacco in the 1990s and forbade ads for other products and services deemed harmful to children. During this time, the MTA was bringing in an estimated $2 million in revenue per year from alcohol advertising.
To pressure the MTA into adding alcohol to the list of banned products and services, the New York Alcohol Policy Alliance needed to launch a campaign to frame the advertisement of alcohol as a public health issue. They engaged F.Y. Eye to help them create a persuasive campaign name and develop a brand identity that would spark a grassroots movement the MTA could not ignore.
Public health research has determined that the more alcohol advertising and marketing to which a young person is exposed, the more likely that they will begin drinking underage, or, if they have already started, the more likely they will binge drink. In New York City, about 670,000 children and young adults commute to school on public transit, all of whom had daily exposure to advertisements that normalized alcohol consumption and encouraged behavior linked to short-term and long-term health problems. To combat this pervasive public health issue, the New York Alcohol Policy Alliance decided that it was time for New York to ban alcohol ads for the explicit purpose of protecting the health of young people.
Based on the recommendation of public health professionals, the New York Alcohol Policy Alliance contacted F.Y. Eye to help them develop a formidable campaign brand identity and communications strategy that would prove to be paramount to their success.
At F.Y. Eye, we take pride in our ability to offer a range of high-quality creative services through our Impact Artist Collective™. For this public health advocacy campaign, we aimed to design a brand identity that was easy to understand and visualized the dynamism, optimism and fortitude of the coalition.
First, we helped the New York Alcohol Policy Alliance construct a campaign name that was straightforward, lent itself to a memorable acronym, and spoke directly to the coalition’s target audience of potential supporters and the MTA. To visualize how the campaign name would translate into a brand, we provided the coalition a variety of logo designs featuring the different name ideas. This visual process gave the coalition members a constructive way to take ownership in the campaign brand’s development and helped the New York Alcohol Policy Alliance build momentum through collective decision-making.
The chosen campaign name—Building Alcohol Ad-Free Transit (BAAFT)— and logo captured the essence of the coalition verbally and visually. The futurist design effortlessly integrated the campaign’s name into the New York cityscape and featured an ascending commuter train, which evoked the progress the New York Policy Alliance aimed to achieve.
After four years and extensive engagement with the MTA Board of Directors, the New York City Council, and other policymakers, the campaign succeeded in its goal. On October 25, 2017, the MTA Board of Directors voted unanimously to amend its advertising policy by adding alcohol beverages to the list of disallowed products and services. That policy took effect on January 1, 2018.
Word of the BAAFT campaign victory spread quickly throughout the global public health community, with calls from advocates to enact similar restrictions in other global cities, including London, Paris, and Melbourne. As the World Health Organization (WHO) has ramped up its advocacy for evidence-based policies to reduce the harmful use of alcohol, the BAAFT campaign has been cited as a success story to achieve this goal.
SERVICES PROVIDED: DIGITAL PSA NETWORK | MEDIA BUYING | CREATIVE SERVICES
PARTNER: SUNNYSIDE COMMUNITY SERVICES
Beneath the bravado that makes New York City the envy of the world is a collection of neighborhoods; each one with its own distinct personality and charm.
The everyday heroes who activate our communities are often hidden from plain sight – they are the local nonprofits that deliver comprehensive support to people at every stage of life. Established in 1974, Sunnyside Community Services (SCS) is one of the anchor institutions that empowers the residents of Western Queens to live life to the fullest. SCS keep seniors healthy and active; prepares our children for college; offers skills-based training to the unemployed; and provides much needed care to the caregivers helping loved ones living with chronic illnesses.
Desiring to reach a larger audience and enhance its member communications, SCS took advantage of F.Y. Eye’s suite of services, including the Digital PSA Network™ grant opportunity, media buying and creative content development support. With our support, SCS was able to better convey their value to members and the greater public without breaking the bank.
As a nonprofit operating in one of the most expensive media markets in the world, SCS struggled to find strategic and cost-effective ways to promote its diverse offerings with current constituents and to reach new audiences across New York City.
Like many organizations, SCS staff spent countless hours promoting its daily activity schedules, program offerings and events through sending emails and posting flyers. They needed to find a cost-effective and flexible way to alert people of the programs SCS offers, and of events sponsored by or hosted by SCS. SCS initially reached out to F.Y. Eye to apply for the PSA Network™ Grant Opportunity, which provides high-traffic nonprofits financial support for the purchase and installation of indoor and outdoor digital signage. SCS recognized that introducing a dynamic display would provide an efficient way to communicate real-time announcements with constituents; reduce paper waste; provide knowledge to our community by posting public service announcements; recognize sponsors, grantors, and guests in a noticeable format; and show our appreciation for participants and volunteers. Moreover, as a high-traffic nonprofit serving low income New Yorkers, SCS was an ideal host site to join F.Y. Eye’s esteemed PSA Network™.
In addition to their need for flexible and efficient central messaging for its general programming, SCS also had a significant need to promote one of its citywide programs, CARENYC: this program helps caregivers navigate the unique challenges of caring for a loved one with a chronic illness like Alzheimer’s or dementia. SCS wanted to build awareness for this program specifically with older adults and their caregivers. Noting that many users of this service commute by bus, SCS sought bus shelter ad placements on busy thoroughfares. However, the quoted cost of running such a campaign far exceeded SCS’ small advertising budget. With its restricted grant funding, how could SCS procure affordable advertising to effectively attract their targeted program participants?
SCS utilized a range of F.Y. Eye’s nonprofit services to meet their internal and external communications needs. From joining the F.Y. Eye PSA Network™ to leveraging our media buying specialists and Impact Artist Collective, SCS took advantage of all F.Y. Eye has to offer New York nonprofits.
Within four months of SCS submitting the PSA Network™ Grant application, we helped them secure funding support for 85% of the digital signage investment and arranged installation with a trusted vendor. With digital signage, SCS can quickly share topical announcements in a way that’s relevant to their members, thank volunteer groups and special guests in a more visible and professionalized way, as well as present fresh, diverse content.
Sunnyside also tapped our media buying program for support identifying and purchasing strategic ad placements that were within budget. Our team negotiated steep discounts on a bus shelter media package for SCS and secured a bonus space that allowed SCS to advertise their CARENYC program for an additional four weeks at no additional cost.
To produce the creative for the CARENYC bus shelter campaign, SCS tapped F.Y. Eye’s Impact Artist Collective. One of our Senior Graphic Designers worked with SCS to resize an out-of-home print advertisement that visually captured the challenges caregivers face and provided a clear call to action. Based on our strategic support, SCS also resized the CARENYC advertisement for the Digital PSA Network™ and we distributed the campaign to our host sites across the five boroughs.
F.Y. Eye’s wraparound marketing and communications support enabled Sunnyside Community Services to achieve their programmatic goals as well as to join a community of like-minded nonprofits. Specifically, SCS used their digital signage to better communicate programming and events with current members, saved $40,000 in media placement costs, doubled the total number of CARENYC campaign impressions, and reached an additional 18,000 people across the five boroughs for free through F.Y. Eye’s PSA Network™.
Sheila Williams, Program Director for the SCS Care NYC program, indicates that in the two months following the bus advertising campaign, the program saw an increased rate of referrals compared with previous months. “The bus shelter campaign gave us high visibility and allowed us to focus on specific neighborhoods where we felt we needed to have a greater presence. This campaign helped increase awareness of our program with a new audience.”
In addition, access to F.Y. Eye allowed SCS to make the most of its lean staffing structure by leaning on their graphic design resources. Michelle Bova, Director of Marketing and Outreach shares that, “The bus shelter project was only possible because the designer we were connected to through F.Y. Eye’s Impact Artist Collective was able to accommodate an extremely fast turnaround for resizing and refining our ad image. It also helped us save time and money on both identifying and affording an out-of-house designer.”
F.Y. Eye continues to shine the light on Sunnyside Community Services by providing access to affordable ad placement opportunities, sharing their social media content with our diverse network of nonprofits and connecting their constituents with new community services and programs through the PSA Network™.