This back to school season there are thousands of adults hitting the books who may never get the recognition they deserve. But for the 29 million Americans who didn’t graduate with a high school diploma, going back to school to get a high school equivalency degree is worth the effort. Over the course of a lifetime, those with a high school degree are expected to earn more than 30% more than their peers without a diploma.
The Ad Council and the nonprofit Dollar General Literacy Foundation partnered with McKinney to launch new PSAs and a new push to congratulate these adult learners. The goal is to celebrate these hardworking adults and inspire many more adults to push their education forward. The new work is awe-inspiring—capturing the real reactions of four people who recently finished high school at ages ranging from 24 to 38.
This Best Work selection is "The Story of Karim" which introduces us to a man who spent most of his life in foster care and dropped out of school with only a few classes left. At age 26, with the encouragement of his wife and 2-year-old daughter, he completed his degree.
Kyle Ruddick of production company HeLo directed the PSAs.
The strategy behind the work “No one gets their diploma alone,” emphasizes the huge role families, friends and supporters make in the journey to get a high school equivalency degree.
Client Ad Council/Dollar General Literacy Foundation Agency McKinney Jonathan Cude, chief creative officer; Stevie Archer, group creative director/copywriter; Ellen Page, associate creative director/art director; Ray Boome, associate creative director/copywriter; Dylan Meagher, copywriter; Regina Brizzolara, director, content production; Kara O’Halloran, interactive producer; Beth McKnight, digital team manager; Aubrey Jones, broadcast producer. Production HeLo Kyle Ruddick, director; Ian Rigby, DP. Music Beacon Street Studios Audio Post Beacon Street Studios Rommel Molina, audio engineer. Editorial Tessa Davis, Zack Winick, Hugo Jordan Postproduction Apache Steve Rodriguez, colorist.
We Are Pi Rolls Out Trailer For Nike-Backed Feature On Athletes With Olympic and Paralympic Dreams
Amsterdam-based creative agency We Are Pi debuted the trailer for Crois Pas Qu’on Dort (Don’t Think We’re Sleeping in English), an inspiring feature-length story of three young French athletes in the lead-up to the Paris 2024 Olympics and Paralympics. The 90-minute French language film, which was developed and produced by We Are Pi with the support of Nike, will premiere in mid January 2025 followed by a release in theaters at the end of January. It follows three protagonists from Paris and its suburbs: Charles-Antoine, a runner with an intellectual disability who won Gold at the Tokyo Paralympics and is competing in this year’s Paralympics; and Leyna and Maysane, French twin sisters and heirs to their Laotian-Algerian family’s very own taekwondo dynasty who are coached by their father and dream of competing in taekwondo at Paris 2024. The athletes were followed by a film crew over the course of five years, recording how their stories, their lives and their sporting achievements unfold over time. The film combines the rawness and intimacy of their everyday lives with the audacity of their sporting dreams, with their stories culminating at the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympics. Crois Pas Qu’on Dort was created with the aim of inviting a new generation of athletes in France into sport by inspiring them with the stories of our protagonists and the transformative power that sport had on their lives. The production began over seven years ago in 2017 with nearly two years of extensive casting sessions that involved viewing around 500 profiles of athletes. Two directors, Nick Walters and Lou Marillier, English and French, respectively, subsequently followed the selected young protagonists closely as they pursued their... Read More