Building Hurricane Awareness Through Personal Stories.

With my team at C&G Partners, we’ve worked with NYC Emergency Management to design Know Your Zone, for four years. Know Your Zone is the city's hurricane awareness campaign that encourages New Yorkers to find out which zone they live in. Running through the hurricane season (June 1 until November 30), the 2018 campaign included print and digital advertisements, as well as new PSA videos of a diverse array of real New Yorkers who survived hurricanes and have been trained as volunteers to support NYC first responders. I worked in conjunction with Cruz Dann Productions to develop interview-style videos from conception and scripting, filming and post-production.

The video campaign builds on previous Know Your Zone campaigns, explaining what to do after determining your hurricane evacuation zone: know the hazards, have a plan, and stay informed. The video format uses storytelling as a tool to relay instructional information. Each video includes personal accounts from 2-3 volunteers who provide candid, honest accounts of their experiences.

To convey the serious subject matter, NYCEM volunteers are depicted in black-and-white, offset by vibrant intro animations and motion graphics.

To help raise awareness of hurricane season, Know Your Zone advertisements are also displayed on bus shelters and Link NYC kiosks and will run on social media, website, newspapers, and television throughout the five boroughs. Through the Know Your Zone campaign, NYC Emergency Management aims to reach the roughly three million New Yorkers living within the city’s hurricane evacuation zones.