Every Phoenix Matters Campaign

Challenge: Create an awareness campaign that will be rememberable and communicate services available to students. Solution: We developed a series of posters with simple and declarative statements covering an array of issues -- from academic struggles to relationship challenges. Our goal was to show students that their emotions are “normal” and present counseling as a viable (non-threatening) way to get help for a variety of everyday emotional experiences, not just those that are life and death. Each poster uses an image with contradicting emotions; most of the subject's face is in color and appears happy; however, their eyes have been grayed out and reflect an emotional struggle. The posters were printed and installed on the back of bathroom stalls in multiple buildings. This location provided a steady flow of traffic of students of all academic levels, including those who don’t live on campus and/or use campus dining facilities, and it guaranteed that students would have privacy if they decided to read and take a photo of the resources listed on the poster without anyone seeing them. They were also posted on digital signage around campus, on the university website, an included in the Weekly Phoenix (an email sent to students, faculty, and staff). Counseling staff saw an increase in services by over 120%.