Kansas had a program that could keep people employed during a down turn instead of laying them off. Problem was, almost nobody knew it existed. The ones who did figured it was too much paperwork to bother with. And the ones who signed up felt like they'd been handed a form and left to figure out the rest.
Three different audiences, three different hangups, one campaign that had to talk to all of them without sounding like it was talking down to any of them.
We didn't build one message and hope it landed everywhere. We built four, each one matched to where the audience actually was.
Make Sure They Know.
For employers who'd never heard of it. Social, infographics, influencer outreach. The pitch: there's a better option than layoffs, and you probably don't know about it yet.
Easy as 1, 2, 3.
For the ones who'd heard of it but figured it was too much hassle. An overview video, a clean FAQ, fact sheets that got to the point.
Check, Check, Check, Go.
For employers actually signing up. Step-by-step onboarding, email sequences, a webinar. Nobody left guessing what came next.
We're Still Here For You.
For companies already in the program. A reminder that support didn't stop the day they enrolled.
Every visual in this campaign was hand-drawn. 127 custom illustrations, zero stock photography. Colors and type came straight from KDOL's existing brand guidelines, so nothing felt bolted on or off-brand.
The full program video ran under two and a half minutes. If it couldn't hold someone's attention that long, it wasn't earning its spot.
A team of seven built the whole thing in under five weeks, with a national holiday eating into that timeline. Short runways force good decisions. There's no room to second-guess when the clock's that tight, so every creative choice had to earn its place before it made it into the deck.
I steered the visual direction and made the calls on what stayed and what got cut, working closely with the team to keep everything consistent and on-brand from the first sketch to final delivery.
No hard numbers to point to here. What I can point to is a campaign where an employer scrolling social media would recognize the same voice, the same visual language, in the fact sheet they downloaded weeks later. That kind of consistency isn't flashy, but it's what makes people trust a government program enough to actually use it.
