The ‘Here’ Campaign

In Northern Ontario, the scope of persistent absenteeism is wide. The ‘Here’ Campaign was developed by Generator together with Northern Ontario Education Leaders (NOEL) to give “every school day counts” champions a brand, a name, and a voice. School board staff across the region can use the suite of campaign tools as a springboard to form focused plans to get students in class.

Our team knew from the offset that this is not a traditional advertising problem. In isolation, no amount of posters, ads, billboards, video will be enough to influence the diverse range of social issues at the root of decreasing attendance. The case for every student is different, making it a problem that only personal intervention can solve. So we asked ourselves: What if we can develop a strong symbol to amplify the individual efforts of teachers, admins, parents and students to bring awareness to the problem and advocate action?

The other challenge was the sheer size of the region. Any one media buy would be a flash in the pan. Instead, we focused our budget towards a longer-term solution. We created an online toolkit with a collection of communication assets and made them available to every stakeholder in every school board to ensure that the campaign is given the lifespan necessary to tackle the size of the problem.

The parts that make up the Here brand consist of a bright, familiarly scholastic colour palette, hand-drawn patterns and most importantly the universal symbol of the classroom roll call; the raised hand. The statement “I’m Here” in and of itself acts as a rally cry to advocates of the cause.

These elements come together to create a full suite of communication tools that complete the online Here toolkit. We created logos, badges, posters, print ads, digital ads, social media content, banners, radio spots, video and presentation assets, all made available in one click. Our media plan became the unified voices of 8 school boards declaring that they are here for our students.