2018 winner, National Safety Council, brand activation - case study

In 2016, the National Safety Council (NSC) had almost no awareness in the US. We had been so focused on our mission, eliminating causes of preventable deaths, that we hadn’t been building our brand.

But then we realized something: we could save more lives if people knew who we were. So, we set out to turn NSC into a brand people recognized. We harnessed a cultural truth — that Americans fear the once-in-a-life time deaths, not the everyday ones more likely to kill them — to establish our new brand platform: Stop Everyday Killers.

In order to build maximum momentum for the effort, we launched the platform with a campaign focused on the most deadly, but overlooked household killer: prescription opioids.

Through research we learned that people knew our country had an opioid problem, but they didn’t think addiction or overdoses could happen to them. We set out to confront them with the reality that it could. The resulting campaign, “Prescribed to Death,”  solidified NSC’s place as a leader fighting causes of preventable deaths. It jumpstarted a national conversation of the overlooked role of prescription opioids in our country’s opioid epidemic.

And most importantly, it equipped Americans with a tool for protection, a simple sticker that could trigger lifesaving conversations with their doctors.

This entry was also highly commended in the not-for-profit category.

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(Please note: parts of this case study may have been redacted for confidentiality purposes.)