Snapchat ads design workshop

In 2021 and 2022, as part of the Chelsea Ruhi Institute, I worked with local youth from diverse backgrounds (mostly recent immigrants from Central America and the Caribbean) to design and carry out community outreach efforts to find and invite new youth to participate in week-long camps and be part of an ongoing community-building process. I spearheaded the first grassroots advertising effort for the Ruhi Institute in the region. A unique challenge was that we were not trying to sell a simple product, but inspire youth to arise to volunteer significant time in their communities, so advertisements had to tap deeper and more complex sources of motivation than traditional advertisements.

I guided a series of design workshops with local teenagers to develop a social media advertising campaign to attract new youth to volunteer in a community-building program. One challenge that quickly arose was that although I wanted the youth to take the lead, their design skills were minimal. Luckily, we were able to find a balance of them mocking up initial ideas and me implementing the final designs, which led them to feel supported and heard rather than marginalized.

Using local imagery and language, we designed three intentionally distinct ads for Snapchat (the most prevalent platform for youth in the area), so we could test their relative efficacy. We implemented the campaign, beginning with an A/B split test, which showed clear differentiation and led to further iteration of the ad content – greatly improving advertising outcomes.

We learned that “talking” directly and personally to the audience by saying something like “Hey, you live in Chelsea, right?” caught people’s attention, despite our initial misgivings about it seeming creepy, and made viewers think more deeply about the subsequent content. We also learned the crucial importance of having a clear, simple, and concise message rather than trying to explain anything in-depth in the ad itself. Forming friendships and helping the younger generation also stood out as two initial concepts that attracted the kind of people who tended to also be interested in the larger-scale community-building process.

I supported the youth to develop a presentation in English and Spanish for an hour-long information session that they facilitated over 20 times with youth who responded to the ads. The social media campaign resulted in the largest influx of new youth ever seen across the region, and we are continuing to test and refine an ongoing strategy for developing and implementing locally-generated, contextually-relevant ads in Chelsea and other neighborhoods across the Northeast region, as well as sharing our experience and what we learned nationally with other branches of the Ruhi Institute.