Our agency’s name is based on the belief that every company should be a work in progress, constantly striving to be better than the day before and taking action to achieve it. Over time, we began to view our country as a work in progress too, and wanted to take action to help improve it in our own small way.
After the outbreak of COVID, and with schools going remote overnight, we launched an educational campaign on digital billboards across the U.S. to show support for teachers and help engage the minds of K-8 students while they were out of the classroom.
Every day at 12pm ET, 14 teacher-generated “seven-word lessons” appeared on billboards purchased by WIP near high-density housing in Boston, New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Kansas City, Phoenix, Denver and Los Angeles.
The lessons were seven words in length because short-term memory holds, on average, seven items. In advertising, it’s therefore a good rule of thumb to keep billboard headlines within this limit.
Over 30 days, more than 400 lessons were published. Teachers were paid $25 for each lesson that was used, or they could donate their payment to DonorsChoose, an educational nonprofit that helps classrooms in need. The lessons were also posted on Seven-Word Lessons Instagram, Twitter and Facebook channels so everyone could benefit from them.
If you have an idea for the next chapter of Seven-Word Lessons,
please reach out to us!
Special thanks to our friends at Outdoor Nation who helped make this project a reality by negotiating discounted billboard space, and donating their own funds.