YOUR GED.ORG
Director: Jesse Dylan
Persuading an audience of 35 million Americans to get back into the classroom and get their high school diploma isn’t something you can achieve through a straight forward TV commercial.
Research told us they weren't going to listen to their parents, peers or advertising that lectured them - rejecting lectures was the very heart of the problem.
So we created The GED Pep Talk Center for The AD Council of America.
This digital first campaign was created at DDB Chicago used a range of relatable celebrities, ranging from the world of music, sitcoms and blockbuster movies, that could either give a mild 'Level 1 pep talk' (Debra Jo Rupp - softly spoken star of That '70s Show) to the opposite end of the scale, with an extreme 'Level 13 pep talk' (Danny Trejo - Hollywood actor and all round hard man.)
The campaign also persuaded the Cannes PR jury to award it a lion.


And every other level in between....

Everything in the campaign drove our audience to the website, where they were encouraged to sign up for free classes, after listening to their preferred level of pep talk. The fully interactive site allowed people to use a sliding scale, until they found a level that was right for them.

Level 6 DMC of RUN DMC, and level 7 Jerry Stiller, doing their pep talks on social feeds.







The site received millions of hits, as visitors got their pep talk from the celebs they knew and looked up to.
Most importantly, the campaign turned site visits into sign ups, with new enrolment levels seeing an unprecedented increase year on year.
Here's some of the outdoor sites.


And a billboard targeting Spanish speaking American citizens who don't have English as their first language.
