Alabama needs more influencers.

Since 2010, Alabama has seen a 40% decrease in students entering teacher education programs. But what do you do when young people are setting their sights on careers as influencers? You show them the influence that Alabama teachers can have.

Teachers Are the Real Influencers

There’s a need for teachers now more than ever, but as students’ interests and professional desires change, recruitment efforts need to change too. The “Teachers Are the Real Influencers” campaign targets future teachers where they’re already spending their time: on social media. Along with multi-platform video ads, Alabama-based influencers are sharing their channels with Alabama teachers to spotlight how teaching has real influence.

We tapped Alabama-based influencers like University of Alabama basketball player Mark Sears to highlight teachers.

Big created the brand for Alabama Gulf Seafood over 10 years ago, after the emergence of the 2010 Gulf oil spill as a way to rally the Alabama community behind our seafood industry. Since then, the Alabama Gulf Seafood brand has developed a legacy of its own. Our task in 2021 was to modernize a brand that boasted a lot of classic character. To do this we would need to shine a new light on Alabama Gulf Seafood, one that didn’t outshine its authenticity.

So what did we do? We dove deep, connecting with true Alabama Gulf fishermen and seafood workers. We found real people with real stories and captured their industry through profound behind-the-scenes film and personal interviews. We redesigned eatalabamaseafood.com to house these genuine, long-form stories and shifted its focus to discuss the rich recipes and seasonal flavors of Alabama Gulf Seafood. This switch in tone allowed us to stray away from the informational and embrace the conversational, adding elements that would draw in consumers and keep them up to date with the brand. By integrating creative, content, and interactive, we have carried on the Alabama Gulf Seafood legacy while adapting it for a more modern style.

Equal representation in a divided state.

Alabama is a historically disparate state—demographically, morally, politically, and geographically split. We had just over 8 months to bring them together. With $13 billion in federal funding and a congressional seat at stake, inciting action was paramount. We divided our efforts to meet people where they were allowing us to push our message to even the hardest to reach places.

See Results

We developed a community-centric resource complete with downloadable toolkits tailored to our diverse audiences.

A global pandemic halted grassroots efforts leading us to adjust our media approach to target the changing landscape.

We created a 4-week bracket that paired 32 county schools with the lowest census response rate head-to-head to win $65,000.

With less than 60% of people counted and only 2 months left to reach our goal, we shifted our approach to address the most apathetic audiences.

After an extremely successful campaign promoting the women’s services of Birmingham’s Brookwood Medical Center (Also known as #ichooseb) through TV, print and digital ads, and social components, we were approached by their parent company, Tenet Healthcare, about executing a similar campaign—only this time on a national scale.

In order to advertise the Labor & Delivery services for more than 60 different hospitals in dozens of diverse markets across the US, Tenet needed a smart, scalable solution that was both effective and cost-efficient. Finding the threshold between creativity and compromise was a must. We asked ourselves: How could we gain greater efficiency on production costs while still being able to effectively target our audience digitally through pre-roll?

We turned a question into an answer. Our solution was to execute a modular, customizable campaign kit that we could specifically version to fit the various markets. For us, the first step was research: understanding each hospital’s audience, position in the market, and tangible benefits allowed us to formulate an efficient plan for creating television, digital ads, and social content that could be easily tailored to fit every individual organization. After gathering intelligence from each hospital and market, we partnered with research organizations to thoroughly test messaging, hashtags, and creative concepts via online forums and live video focus groups comprised of our various target audiences.

Our primary message vector was the idea of “Ask Your Friends” for facilities where the hospital OB line was established, already competing in the space, and where doctors would support a positive reaction should a consumer literally “ask their friends.” We also created additional message vectors, “Every Story Has A Beginning” and “You Have Questions. We Have Answers” to test in hospitals with newly-established OB services or who were in competition with OB providers close to them with well-known doctors. Based on messaging results and creative feedback, we solidified our creative concepts by casting a mix of talent featuring various ethnicities appropriate to each market and made sure we covered every variable benefit for each hospital. Once it came time to produce the actual assets, execution of the customized TV/pre-roll and digital was a breeze thanks to all the groundwork we laid ahead of time.

The result has been universally praised throughout the Tenet organization, as well as in the individual hospitals having also benefited. In return, it’s allowed us to add additional medical service lines on a national scale, work with 65 individual hospitals across 30 markets, and grow Big’s footprint in the healthcare industry.

As part of a rebranding effort for the Alabama Department of Commerce, we created an identity that would be smart, yet approachable; one that proudly expressed Alabama’s point of view as a workforce, a people, and a state. Instead of an elaborate logo and identity system that would date itself over time, we created a mark that stands for what we value most in Alabama—both as a manufacturer of industry and ideas.

Brands have been liberated from the confines of traditional news outlets. Now they can be publishers, too. But if that information isn’t relevant, exciting, and share-worthy, it is a waste of time. Don’t waste time.

We are a people of stories. So it’s no wonder that we are continually drawn to things that are well told. Great stories have the power to create gravity that effortlessly draw people into a brand.

A category five hurricane, two seasons of drought and a full summer season of closed waterways due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill hit Alabama’s seafood industry hard. Concerns of safety and upward price-pressures were causing business to dry up, putting numerous fishermen out of business and pinching fleets, personnel and profits for everybody. The industry needed to create new demand for Gulf product, plain and simple.

Big’s strategy was to shorten the distance between consumers and the hardworking folks of Alabama’s seafood industry, the group that research told us people found most trustworthy. Doing this not only helped insert Alabama Gulf Seafood into the buy local conversation, it fostered a genuine sense of pride in the product for everyone in the Yellowhammer State. It also created a brand that embraced the hotness of the South in a way that would make even the most ardent Yankee yearn for golden fried shrimp.

While the creative was picking up awards (like Best of Show at the District 7 Addy awards against major national campaigns), the brand continued to pick up incredibly valuable partnerships. We got up with 2012 CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year Billy Reid to make a line of Alabama Gulf Seafood merchandise benefiting the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, both in 2012 and again in 2014.

We partnered with the Hangout Music Festival in Gulf Shores for two years running to feature fresh, Alabama-sourced seafood in the only air-conditioned tent on site to serve artists and VIPs from all around the world. In 2014, we expanded our Hangout partnership to feature the Alabama Gulf Seafood courtyard at the BMI stage. We passed out branded shirts backstage that ended up on the cover the Alabama Shakes iTunes sessions album. We joined forces with nationally recognized chefs Frank Stitt, Chris Hastings, John Currence, and Wesley True to make sure there was no stone left unturned when it came to making Alabama Gulf Seafood a household name.