Change the Ref and Area 23
Impossible Operation
While this campaign has earned honors throughout this awards show, its first-place win in this category is perhaps the best proof of how meaningful this effort is.
With a tiny budget of $3,000, the team created Impossible Operation, a sad and scary twist on the classic board game. And it mailed it to members of the media and Congress, with the hope of reinstating the ban on assault rifles that had expired in 2004. To spread the word, it used the most knowledgeable and credible group of influencers imaginable: ER and trauma surgeons who had tried to save those shot with assault rifles.
Working with Change The Ref, a group aimed at ending mass shootings and founded by the parents of Joaquin Oliver, who was killed in the Parkland school shooting, doctors and other gun-safety advocates appeared in a video about the game, leveraging it on their social channels. They included Dr. Joseph Sakran, emergency surgery chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital and founder of This Is Our Lane, a gun safety physician group with 30,000 followers; Dr. William Begg, a treating physician at Sandy Hook; and 10 medical groups.
Through shares and retweets, Impossible Operation quickly reached celebrity gun-safety activists, medical organizations, and other gun-safety organizations, including March For Our Lives, who shared the film.
Impossible Operation reached more than 63 million people online, with more than 41,000 retweets and 54,000 likes. Overall, Impossible Operation reached 100 million people, meaningfully changing the substance of the assault weapon ban conversation.
Sponsor: Healthline
