A MICA student-generated campaign for health 

Posted: 7:02 pm Tue, July 27, 2010
By Rachel Pryzgoda
Daily Record Business Writer

Graduate students at Maryland Institute College of Art weaved together the words and photographs of community members to design a local health care nonprofit’s successful new ad campaign.

The campaign for Baltimore HealthCare Access Inc., which helps Baltimoreans obtain health care, has generated many more phone calls to its hotline than it was getting before.

“We used to only get a handful of calls a week,” said Kathy Westcoat, president of BHCA. “Now, we get about 20 calls a day.”

The MICA students came up with the idea for the slogan, and community members filled in the blanks for the advertisements running on buses and bus shelters throughout the city.

The “awareness campaign,” as Westcoat described it, was created during a class at MICA’s Center for Design Practice. The class, offered only to undergraduate students until this year, encourages students to research their target audience by conducting interviews and immersing themselves in the community. Also, they design the entire campaign.

“The process is research heavy,” said student Christina Beard, 28, originally from Grosse Pointe, Mich., who was the photographer on the project. “We were spending a lot of time with the clients and [learning about] what speaks to them.”

Beard and two other students worked on the campaign. Beth Taylor, 30, of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., and Supisa Wattanasansanee, of Bangkok, and Beard are all scheduled to graduate in May 2011.

They emphasized the value of the research process. The hardest part, they said, was accurately portraying the feelings of those interviewed — they wanted to make sure they got it just right.

“Trying to figure out what language — verbal and visual — would best convey [how they felt],” said Taylor. “We needed to steer away from being heavy handed, condescending or cheesy.”

The class met from January to May of this year and consisted of the three students, faculty adviser Joe Galbreath, and Mike Weikert, director of the Center for Design Practice.

“We invited them to take that journey,” said Weikert, who also regarded the research as the most important part of the five-month process.

The “the timing did present a little bit of a challenge” because it was a long time to wait for the finished product, Westcoat said.

She said it was worth the wait, though.

“MICA held focus groups, asked us a bunch of questions and did all the legwork,” she said. “The ad agencies before charged so much overhead, and this was really a bargain and a creative way to engage students on a social issue.”

The posters read: “My health is important because I care about my _______. It’s your health. It’s your call,” and have five different images — representing family, career, baby, future or community.

They are displayed in 14 bus shelters and 90 bus interiors, according to Westcoat.

The campaign, which received $75,000 from private foundations, also features 716 radio slots, which will run until December, she said. The radio advertisements, produced by Radio One, feature the voices of BHCA staff and clients. MICA developed the script.