CHALLENGE
The ACLU and a coalition of 800+ organizations came to me with this: they wanted to raise awareness about a set of archaic and discriminatory New York State laws that were denying women equal rights in areas ranging from domestic abuse protections to equal pay. Could I make a PSA for them? Also, they had no money.
APPROACH
It can be hard to get people to watch and share somber PSAs — so we leaned into the absurdity and irony that a state with such a progressive image had such backwards laws.
With the goal of creating an attention-grabbing hook, we created “Illegal or Just Sleazy”:
a gameshow format that laid out various scenarios and asked people if they were… you know, actually illegal or just incredibly sleazy.
I worked with many (many) lawyers to write gameshow questions, produced a video designed to look like a public access show, and the game continued on Twitter, through phone-banking, and at live events.
RESULTS
We went “PSA viral” (by regional 2013 standards) with what The Cut called “the most depressing gameshow ever”. The WEC’s petition collected five times as many signatures as their prior campaign, and grew their Twitter following and email list. The campaign also helped put the Women’s Equality Coalition out of business: the group’s sole purpose was to pass this set of equal rights bills, and the following year they were signed into law.
