[Ed. note: This blog is cross-posted from the Walla Walla Valley, WA, group, about how the Children's Resilience Initiative wanted to reach a new audience for their work. This new 15-second video ad they created will be shown before every movie in the local 12-theater complex, for a total of 1,642 times during October. It plays with other ads, such as those from the local hospital.]
Effectively communicating a message in 15 seconds can take hours to formulate. After spending weeks, months and years upgrading our most current phrase “Resilience Trumps ACEs”, our own resilience was getting exhausted. A simpler more meaningful message was necessary to capture attention and create new awareness.
If we hadn’t practiced resilience training ourselves we might have never accomplished our task. Teri Barila, co-founder of the Children's Resilience Initiative, kept bouncing ideas my way. I kept researching to understand why resilience trumps ACEs, how resilience trumps ACEs and what needed to be understood so our audience could get the most beneficial understanding of what we’re trying to say.
After three monthly meetings and several failed attempts to effectively upgrade our message, Teri bounced yet another idea off of my “never give up” attitude. Teri suggested a video ad to be played at our local Grand Cinema Theater. I was so happy that we had abandoned the idea of creating yard signs that my enthusiasm sent waves of innovation all the way down to my visual cortex.
The words “Hearts Trump ACEs” appeared in my mind. Teri was delighted. "Eureka!" we proclaimed. We compiled some of our existing graphics with our new phrase and we sent them to the professional ad makers at Before the Movie. After a couple of failed attempts to get our ad makers to understand the sensitive nature of our message, Teri was able to win them over as valuable team members.
May we say perseverance of resilience has given us a clarion’s voice? We've done it! The Grand Cinemas in Walla Walla is playing our song-and-dance before each movie thru October. Here's a sneak peek.
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