Viacom and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation created the Get Schooled National Challenge & Tour to reach the people most affected by low high school graduation rates and college readiness: the kids in school. Get Schooled, with the backing of principals who got the word out the tour was coming, invited some of the country’s top entertainers and athletes — Get Schooled “education ambassadors” — to come out for the tour and get real about school: In conversations with students they talked about how education, even when the going got tough or boring, had been invaluable to their professions. 

Crucial to the success of the Get Schooled National Challenge & Tour were digital and social media strategies that included:

• microsites for each city visited
• main website GetSchooled.com
• an actively growing contact database
• blogging
• Facebook
• online video

Awards
• CTAM Mark Awards — Silver — Partnership with Non-Profit Organizations, Multimedia Campaign

The project’s pitch depended upon a Viacom presentation where form amplified content. How? First, the presentation clearly and concisely organized a lot of content, a complex package of parts — venues, talent, tour bus, strategies, brochures, premiums, press plan, and contests among many other.

Secondly, after simplifying and outlining the many parts of the content, the presentation used form — graphic design and motion graphics — to amplify the simplified content. The glue was a style guide, the style guide for all of Get Schooled. It’s key elements included:

• dos and don’ts of logo usage
• color palette
• fonts
• graphic elements
• background patterns 

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