Campaign
Captain Compassion
A character-led anti-bullying campaign built across video, posters, web, OOH, comics, social, and classroom materials.
- Integrated Campaign
- Character System
- OOH
- Role
- Creative Manager, Campaign Lead, Designer, Art Direction
- Client
- Committee for Children
- Year
- 2018
- Timeline
- Approximately 2 months for initial campaign development
- Deliverables
- Campaign concept, Character system, Posters, OOH, Social assets, Responsive microsite, Interactive decoder-wheel experience, Video direction, Comics, Educational resources, Digital assets
- Tools
- Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe InDesign, Web design, HTML/CSS for interactive decoder-wheel experience
Challenge
Committee for Children needed a National Bullying Prevention Month campaign that could help parents, educators, and students talk about bullying in a way that felt approachable, memorable, and useful.
The topic was serious, but the campaign could not feel heavy or clinical. It needed to give kids and adults a simple framework for recognizing, reporting, and refusing bullying while still feeling engaging enough to carry across comics, posters, digital, video, and classroom materials.
Approach
We built the campaign around a superhero world. Captain Compassion became the guide, helping students understand their bystander power and giving the campaign a visual language that made a difficult topic easier to enter.
The story followed Chris Kind, a student witnessing bullying scenarios through a series of weekly comics. Through Captain Compassion, Chris transforms into Kid Kinder, a character designed to help kids see that small actions can make a real difference.
The campaign system gave the idea room to expand across characters, comics, posters, video, microsite content, social posts, educational resources, and OOH placements while keeping the message consistent.
OOH and Posters
Campaign visuals extended into public-facing posters and large-format placements.
Digital and Web
The campaign microsite gave families and educators a central place to access comics, videos, tips, and classroom resources.
Video and Social
Video and social assets helped the campaign move beyond static materials and reach audiences across channels.
Comics as Campaign Storytelling
Across three annual campaigns, the Captain Compassion comic series turned anti-bullying guidance into short, character-led stories. Each installment used relatable student scenarios to model how kids could recognize bullying, respond safely, include others, and use their "bystander power" in real situations. The comics helped extend the campaign beyond posters and videos into classroom-ready storytelling. They gave the character system a repeatable narrative format and made the campaign more approachable, memorable, and useful for students. My role spanned campaign creative direction, character system development, story direction, visual direction, and production oversight.
Year 1: Bystander Power
Introducing bystander power through school-based bullying scenarios.
Year 2: Kid Kinder
Expanding the campaign with Kid Kinder and a multi-part camp storyline.
Year 3: Digital and Online Harm
Applying the campaign system to online behavior, exclusion, and digital harm.
Character System
Captain Compassion and Kid Kinder gave a serious topic a friendly face. The character system moved from rough sketches to costume exploration to a finished pair of heroes kids could instantly recognize across posters, comics, and classroom materials.
Social Video Activation
The campaign also extended into social video, including a teen-celebrity partnership with Skai Jackson to introduce Captain Compassion and promote the program across YouTube, Instagram, and other social channels.
Educational Resources
The campaign translated research-based bullying prevention guidance into family and classroom materials.
What I owned
- Led campaign development from concept through execution.
- Co-developed the Captain Compassion character system with Art Director Kyle Hunter.
- Concepted Kid Kinder as the campaign's sidekick and main student-facing hero.
- Directed campaign video execution and helped guide the visual storytelling.
- Designed campaign posters, digital assets, and OOH materials.
- Designed the campaign website experience and collaborated on implementation.
- Designed and coded an interactive decoder-wheel experience for the campaign site.
- Helped translate the campaign across comics, social media, educational resources, web, video, and print.
Why it mattered
Captain Compassion turned a serious bullying-prevention message into a campaign system that felt approachable, memorable, and useful for students, families, and educators. The character-driven approach gave the organization a flexible platform that could grow across channels and continue beyond the original launch.
Impact
- Won two MarCom Awards in 2019, including Gold for print media and Platinum for digital media.
- Renewed in 2019 and 2020.
- Continued beyond the original campaign launch as a flexible bullying-prevention resource.