The Ask
Create an out-of-home campaign that gets black people to visit the National Parks.
The Challenge
Black people do not visit the outdoors. They are the overwhelming majority in those who avoid the National Service Parks. Barriers such as poor park service, transportation insects/animals, the natural elements, and lack of resources prevent black people from visiting the park sites. The Goal: remove the barriers to significantly increase the percentage of black people who visit the parks.
The Insight
"Barriers can be broken by building community." Black individuals avoid parks because of the lack of community + representation (those who look like us outdoors) in addition to other obstacles. The representation that does exist for black people outdoors, such as Melanin Base Camp and Blacks Who Camp don't have high visibility outside of social media.
The Strategy
Build in-person community + representation for black people outdoors. Community can be built by speaking directly to the audience in the OOH advertising efforts. The advertisements will be addressing the issues of transportation and resources: by showing messaging that provides a solution and encourages them to visit the parks. Promoting this through the National Service Parks, will help dissolve the barriers that prevent many from visiting.
The IDEA
This campaign included creating 3 OOH executions with the tagline "Nature is Here, Where are You?". The ads were placed at transportation centers in Memphis, Atlanta, and Miami Gardens where there were higher populations of black people. The imagery used were photos of black people at park sites, enjoying a variety of activities. We chose to use this as it will influence others to visit the parks. This campaign will lastly offer free rides to those that live in those areas, tackling both barriers of representation and transportation at the same time.
Downtown Memphis.
MARTA at Buckhead, Atlanta.
Miami Gardens in the Miami-Dade Area.
In all of our ads, we wanted to show realistic images of black people doing activities in nature. We also wanted to create a subliminal but yet inclusive undertones and so the "HERE" in the first sentence of those ads are colored in black skin tones Black, Dark Brown, and Light Brown.
Another part of our execution was to use the @melaninbasecamp collaboration to solve select city's issues of either access or resources to National State Parks. Memphis has an issue of resources and access as there isn't a national park for 187 miles, in Arkansas. By placing the ad downtown near transportation, we can show that while resources and parks are far and few, we can help. Atlanta also has a minor accessibility issue as there are only two NSP's near the metropolitan area, but by strategically placing targeted ads in the MARTA stations and offering free rides for a limited time we can do our part to increase the number of black people who visit the parks. Finally, the Miami Dade area has decent access to 3 National Park Sites, but the community is impoverished. By offering rides we can increase the chances that the percentage of black people who visit our parks will increase.
Memphis distance from NSP 187 miles.
Atlanta distance from NSP 28 miles.
Miami-Dade Gardens area distance from NSP 48.5 miles