Moving millions on issues they’d rather not think about
The Ad Council operates at a scale most marketers never touch — $1.8 billion in annual donated media, campaigns that run in every state, and issues that most people would rather not confront. My role was to make them confront it anyway.
As Campaign Director, I led the end-to-end strategy and rollout of American Dreams, a $5.5MM+ national LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination campaign under the Love Has No Labels initiative. The campaign targeted 28 states without LGBTQ+ protections, reaching audiences our research identified as “attitudinally movable” — people who believed in equality in theory but hadn’t connected it to the lived reality of discrimination in housing, employment, and safety.
This wasn’t awareness for awareness’s sake. Working closely with the Insights & Analytics team, I identified key audience segments — including Selective Equality Believers — through qualitative and quantitative research, then translated those findings into channel strategy, message architecture, and creative direction. I directed a cross-functional team to develop three culturally resonant PSA films and orchestrated their distribution across TV, paid digital, social, radio, and out-of-home, with $800K+ in donated media placements on platforms like YouTube and TikTok.
The hardest part wasn’t the media plan. It was the message — crafting narratives about housing discrimination, employment bias, and physical safety that fostered empathy without triggering defensiveness. That required constant calibration between creative ambition and strategic discipline.
What I Actually Did
- Led end-to-end campaign strategy from audience research through media execution and performance reporting
- Partnered with the Insights & Analytics team to identify key segments through qualitative and quantitative research, translating findings into actionable channel and creative strategies
- Directed cross-functional team through development of three PSA films across housing, safety, and employment themes
- Orchestrated channel integration across paid, earned, and owned media — including influencer activations and a centralized digital hub with legal protection resources and personal narratives
- Managed hyperlocal implementation in key states, customizing national messaging through coalition building with local advocates and community partners
- Developed campaign performance dashboards, applying ongoing data insights to inform media pacing, content iteration, and stakeholder reporting
- Collaborated with senior executives and creative directors to align campaign vision with The Ad Council’s broader mission of social change
Campaign Themes
- Housing — Discrimination in where you can live
- Employment — Discrimination in where you can work
- Safety — Discrimination in how you move through the world