The State of California Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission (MHSOAC) was created to drive transformational change across the state’s mental health system, working to ensure that people get the care they need in a timely, comprehensive, effective, and culturally competent manner.
MHSOAC partnered with Media Cause to create a campaign to combat the rise in race-based bullying among school-age children in California (K-12).
MHSOAC had three goals for the campaign:
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) youth specifically experienced an alarming increase in bullying, hate crimes, and hate speech. MHSOAC wanted to develop a comprehensive statewide campaign, utilizing social media, to bring awareness to the issue and connect youth through peer-to-peer support.
Bullying affects youth directly, but parents and educators are often involved and aware of the problem. Media Cause discovered a few key challenges the campaign would have to confront in order to achieve its goals:
#1 Bullying has become normalized and accepted behavior.
#2 Social media is driving that normalization.
#3 Youth feel powerless to change it.
#4 Educators need support from parents and counselors.
#5 Anti-bullying campaigns today are largely futile.
We chose Right Our Story as the campaign name to signify the pervasiveness of the issue and the need for collective action, because everyone plays a role in bullying, whether as a bystander, a bully, or a victim. Bullying can’t be addressed unless people are willing to talk about it, which is why language and the community became the focus of our campaign.
Our approach in leading this campaign with youth at the forefront was unique in this issue area. To shift the narrative and denormalize race-based bullying, we have focused on:
Through a multipronged research approach, including extensive first-party research with the people most impacted, we met with key stakeholders, conducted a cultural and competitive assessment, and did deep audience research. This culminated in the following:
We built a microsite and developed a private community dedicated to youth to bring the campaign to life. As the home of the campaign, the microsite helps our youth audiences take the first step, with the primary CTA for them to share a story.
Youth can also access resources and watch an animated video, produced in partnership with LA-based design studio The Little Labs, to understand their role in the bullying story. The video landing page features a “monster school” in which various “monster” characters face race-based bullying, paralleling real-life scenarios that students face in schools. Learning more about these monsters helps viewers to understand the issue and how they could help prevent it.
The private community is at the heart of the campaign and creates a safe space for youth to share their experience, support one another, and develop ideas to address bullying in their community.
In May 2023, we hosted a week of action and launched an anonymous bullying reporting tool to drive awareness and engagement with the material. During the Week of Action, we elevated the issue of bullying by hosting two online events and a social content series, including additional videos, featuring youth activists.
We also launched the Bullied Button, an online reporting tool allowing youth to share bullying incidents anonymously, to wrap up the Week of Action. This lowers the barrier of entry and helped us and the client understand where bullying happens in the State.
Each of the campaign initiatives has been supported by a cross-channel media campaign advertised on social media (Instagram, TikTok, SnapChat, YouTube), out of home placements (baseball games, youth community centers), and programmatic vendors. Our blanket paid media approach uses multiple touchpoints across these different channels to meet audiences where they are so that they can more readily relate to the material.
We used influencers with both youth and parent creators to raise awareness and drive story submissions and reporting of bullying incidents. The influencer strategy lent authenticity to the campaign message and strengthened the call to action.
Additionally, we created organic Instagram and TikTok accounts where the campaign messages are shared.
Partnerships with organizations representing diverse communities, mental health organizations, and youth leadership organizations have widened the reach of the campaign and increased the discussion about the issue online.
