“Shirts In School” Joins Anti-Bullying Movement: Brand Marketer Launches Nationwide “Pink In School Day” | WPN World People News

Combining live, on-campus activations with broad social media initiatives, a US marketing firm has launched “Pink In School Day” and called its nationwide network of high school and college students to support the anti-bullying program on the day of March 22nd, 2011. Inspired by similar campaigns in other countries, students will wear specially made pink T-Shirts, recruit classmates to wear pink, post custom facebook profile pictures, posts and photos across their social media platforms in a show of solidarity against bullying, and in an effort to raise awareness of this growing problem. Other students across the US are urged to wear any pink shirt to join in the campaign.

The anti-bullying movement has gained much momentum over the last few years due to both an increase in physical and cyberspace bullying and an alarming number of teen suicides as a result. While most states have anti-bullying laws many have been working to toughen them. Schools have been required to introduce education and awareness policies and programs and the US Department of Education just announced that it may withhold federal funds to schools that fail to stop the practice.

Richard Whitney, initiator of this activity states “This is something that is of enormous importance to our kids. We see this as a great opportunity to leverage our student network to raise awareness and encourage action on campuses across the country, using both on-school presence and social media outreach into their digital worlds. While we would love sponsor partners, we believe in this cause so strongly that we are prepared to fund it ourselves.”

Launched in October 2010, this project has rapidly built a network of over 5,000 students with a reach of 10,000,000 friends and classmates who are paid to wear a branded shirt to school, as well as share pictures and videos of the “event” on their own Facebook accounts. In addition to the money they earn each day, they are also able to direct additional revenue to their school, their team or their organization or club. The supporting brand is able to not only target their desired audience in a live setting, but also able to reach these individuals’ extended “sphere of influence” via their (usually gated) online social networks in a highly cost-effective and quantifiable manner. Each campaign can be further targeted geographically, as well as by likes, gender and life style. Currently approximately 300 new students sign up each day