The My Brother’s Keeper Initiative was launched in 2014 by President Obama to close the opportunity gap for young men of color in America. We worked with the My Brother’s Keeper team, first at The White House and then at the Obama Foundation, to grow visibility for the platform and activate a broader public audience. In helping to build a coalition our efforts focused on encouraging allyship and creating action with partners like MTV and ESPN.
Campaign strategy
UX
Anthem Films
Website Design
Social Activation
Photography
When President Obama launched the My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) initiative in 2014, his goal was to close opportunity gaps for young boys and men of color, and ensure that they all have the chances to reach their potential. However, after a few years , MBK was still unknown to most people, and needed a public facing campaign that would raise awareness of the systemic issues and barriers facing these young men and support them.
In 2016, The White House engaged Matter Unlimited to create MBK’s first public-facing campaign launched at the MTV VMA Awards, sparking an online conversation and support via #IamMBK.
After President Obama left the White House, we were tasked with continuing that conversation and creating more momentum with new audiences. Looking to the future of the program, we kicked off with a research study designed to understand existing and potential new audiences. A key insight emerged: young Americans between 18 and 34 are extremely aware and very concerned about race relations, poverty, and education but are unsure of how to join the conversation and make a difference.
Later in early 2018, in partnership with ESPN, we issued an invitation launching the ‘We Are The Ones’ campaign. It became a rallying cry to all young… Americans to become Allies of MBK. An anthemic film premiered on ESPN featuring President Obama, Steph Curry and Chance the Rapper.
Accompanying the film we created “The Keepers’ Code”, a digital activation on IamMBK.org, which provided a guide created by young men of color around the nation for Allies to live by.
In just the first weeks after launching, we saw unprecedented sign ups, and significant spikes in traffic to MBK’s partner organizations, like Mentoring.org. #TheKeepersCode and #IamMBK received over 50,000,000+ impressions across Twitter & Instagram.
