Case Studies
“ When there's an elephant in the room, vital truths can go unspoken, unlearned, unrequited and unseen.
At Elephant Creative, we place those truths at the center of every room and every story we enter. ”
When the smoke clears
PROBLEM: Although California has led the way in cannabis legalization, there remain tremendous discrepancies, and inequities in the licensing, dispensary allotment and incarceration rates related to cannabis law. There is also a lack of uniformity toward cannabis throughout the state, county to county. Moreover, the climate of cannabis culture has invigorated the tall tale of California as the wild, wild, west by the media and more conservative perspectives. This in turn has led to California serving as the poster child for the idea of liberal policies leading to urban lawlessness and infrastructure decay. This false narrative has needed an alternate voice to provide clarity, and definition, on the true impact of cannabis to the state’s overall health and prosperity.
OUR SOLUTION: The California Urban Partnership [CUP], a non profit, community, activist organization, sought to be that alternative voice; to not only, investigate these discrepancies, but to also, create further discussion amongst California Lawmakers regarding the benefits of cannabis as a viable, commercial, product for mass consumption and specialized medical usage. The result: a mini-documentary series, aimed at lawmakers, to explore cannabis policy within the state and its inequities — particularly the effect on California’s black and brown communities. The series, When the Smoke Clears, zeroes in on the dynamics of family, community health, tax revenue distribution, and criminalization. It also discusses, in depth, the vast revenue boosting potential of cannabis for California business and enterprise.
City of Albuquerque
PROBLEM: Albuquerque is a city with a very complicated, past, a thousand years in the making. It is a city with a rich, multicultural, history and prideful roots, but also a city beset with tremendous challenges — both urban, and rural. Albuquerque, intensely battles with extreme, crisis level, rates of violent crime (2nd highest in the nation), illegal drug use, mental health issues, and homelessness. All while consistently fighting for state and federal funding as the poorest state in the union. Once the COVID 19 pandemic landed, it devastated the very foundations of the city and stressed the limited resources of the entire region to the brink
Taking these challenges into account, the mayor and city leaders, wanted to find a way to build messaging that illustrated the city’s process for attacking these issues, while also raising citizen esteem and activism. Additionally, they also wanted to highlight their recruitment efforts for city employment opportunities within a full spectrum of municipal services. The key, however, was structuring the messaging in the nuance of the city’s unique history and culture. It also needed to be timely as the mayor was up for re-election the following year.
One of the most difficult messaging sectors for the city was the public safety arena — especially in the wake of the George Floyd Summer. Fortunately, we were able to find the right tone to craft a public safety campaign, including police recruitment that felt authentic, organic, and respectful within the community and its singular culture. It was notable that we achieved this milestone without sacrificing police morale.
OUR SOLUTION: The CHOOSEONE campaign, a multi-pronged messaging campaign that served as not only a call-to-action drive for city services, but also a public esteem building effort to help citizen morale, post pandemic. Additionally, CHOOSEONE engaged in a Police and Fire Department recruitment which served as the official launch of The Albuquerque Community Safety Department [ACS]. This department attaches healthcare and human services professionals to first responder teams. They accompany a police officer on all non-violent 911 calls. ACS has been a tremendous success handling over 100,000 calls since inception and has grown the responder team by 500%. It is now a model program for urban public safety.
N.Y.P.D.
THE PROBLEM: How does the largest police department in the world advertise a new policing initiative; enroll community support, tout their historic statistical success in crime reduction, and build trust with an embattled community? All, while being actively protested due to the high profile death of a member of said community.
In the midst of an increasingly polarizing national narrative of police misconduct and shootings of unarmed citizens, and particularly relative to the death of Eric Garner, former Commissioner James O’Neill created a policing initiative called Neighborhood Policing. This initiative featured select officers patrolling specific neighborhoods where they assumed responsibility. These officers were not available for radio calls or 911 responses. Instead, they communicated directly with community residents via text, email or calls from smart phones. This form of patrol was intended to integrate officers into neighborhood culture, and to provide heightened knowledge that would lead to more efficient, precise policing for TRUE criminals with less incidents of mistaken identity, unnecessary aggression, etc. In addition, by seeing and interacting with the same officers consistently, the intent was for community members to gain more familiarity, fostering better trust.
Neighborhood Policing had been initiated for over a year before we were brought on, yet we found the average New Yorker did not have name recognition or understanding of the initiative.
OUR SOLUTION: The public’s mounting anger and fear of law enforcement was the NYPD’s was the most pressing issue. Rather than avoidance, we went into eye of the storm, the heart of communities in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and even Staten Island where Eric Garner’s death occurred. We diligently sought members of the public willing to speak candidly about the NYPD, and engaged them with an interview technique that fostered full expression, instead of the usual sound bite style. The responses were shocking, and informed the rest of the campaign. We discovered that in their “ideal” form of law enforcement, most New Yorkers actually wanted many of the same core principals contained in Commissioner O’Neill’s, Neighborhood Policing. They may have phrased it differently, but the ideas were essentially the same. This became the core value of the campaign which we titled, Build the Block — as in building a conversation, neighborhood block by neighborhood block.
It was a risk, but we used the public’s actual interviews as commercial spots to highlight community needs and wants from police — in their own words. Then, the same technique was deployed among NYPD officers. We engaged officers to speak not only to their job experiences, but also to their humanity. The spots also included startling statistics regarding NYPD crime reduction.
With this combination, in two separate launches over 13 months, we employed a multi-layered media strategy that commanded full community saturation with term, and idea, of Neighborhood Policing. It boldly, included traditional advertising spaces thought to be ineffective, or obsolete, such as music and talk radio programming.
The Build the Block campaign found common ground between two historically opposed entities in New York City. It was incredibly challenging, yet we created an environment for the NYPD to actually hear hard, inalienable truths regarding the community’s feelings toward them. At our urging, they conceded this negative, and were rewarded by the end of campaign with a 19% (11 point) rise among African-Americans in the NYPD Elucd Sentiment Meter which measures public response and feelings toward the police. The meter collected responses from approximately 10,000 New Yorkers per month.
Build The Block changed the community’s access point to the NYPD. In the beginning of the campaign, Build the Block meetings didn’t exist. By the end of the second launch there were over 1000 meetings enacted in every borough — in all 77 precincts in the city.
Oakland Be Mine
THE PROBLEM: Oakland California’s image as the blighted step-child of San Francisco. This long standing notion is the origin of Gertrude Stein’s famous quote, “There is no there, there”. Oakland has historically been a city replete with all the urban ailments: drugs, violence, crime, housing, struggling schools, and high levels of unemployment.
While yes, those issues exists, it is also a very beautiful city, in terms of topography , architecture and especially, its people. In fact, it is a city that has a redwood forest with a waterfall, more artists than any other U.S city, other than Brooklyn, NY, and, at the time this film was made, was the most diverse city in America. Moreover, and most tangibly, Oakland has always been the soul of the San Francisco Bay Area.
How then does a blighted city remind its residents of the inherent beauty and value of the city while also centering the campaign through a corporate giant, such as Southwest Airlines?
OUR SOLUTION: We created a narrative, short film that also served as a travelogue to introduce the best parts of the city to visitors, and remind residents of how special Oakland can be. The key for us was to avoid a standard format at all costs. The viewer couldn’t be told about the special elements of the city, they had to be shown. Thus, we wrote an eclectic love story, featuring a weary traveler and a woman named … “Oakland” who plays a cat and mouse game with our traveler throughout the city, showing him and the viewers her true beauty.
The success was resounding. The film was launched at the Oakland Airport’s remodeled Southwest Terminal Baggage Claim on a 30 foot Media Wall. It was the central attraction and continued to screen solo at the terminal for 5 years with over 12 million views.
Oakland B Mine, won a 510 Media Award, was used as part of an Oakland Mayoral Inauguration, and helped foster a decade long resurgence for Oakland’s embattled image.
Mango
THE PROBLEM: The Spanish apparel company sought to make advances into the crowded, American retail market but did not want to follow the standard European glamor approach.
OUR SOLUTION: Instead of glamour, we helped craft something more in line with Mango’s cool, sexy, utility wear, vibe — a series of behind-the-scene spots designed specifically for social media and in-store viewing, to deconstruct the chic, supermodel mystique, using model / actress Milla Jojovich and France’s, gritty, pop culture icon, Lou Doillon. These spots created an “insider” feel for their customer base. It gave viewers an opportunity to feel as though they were participating in a unique part of the process while simultaneously allowing MANGO to showcase the ease and practicality of their entire, seasonal, fashion line.
