‘Unleashed’ Campaign Case Study

“The teal palette wasn’t a default aesthetic choice; it was designed to connect the case study to Sexual Assault Awareness Month.”

---

Background

This case study assignment required selecting an existing strategic communication campaign, analyzing its strategy, execution, and effectiveness across six required sections, and producing a graphically designed case study within a strict three-page limit.

I chose to analyze the “Freshmen Unleashed” campaign because it was a research-driven entertainment-education intervention designed to address sexual assault prevention among first-year college students. The campaign was developed and studied by Hust et al. (2017) and delivered through a print-based mini-magazine that was mailed directly to students’ campus mailboxes, bypassing the voluntary attendance barrier that limits the reach of most traditional prevention programs. The campaign addressed six interconnected dimensions of sexual assault prevention simultaneously: sexual consent negotiation, bystander intervention, reporting of assaults, help-seeking after an incident, supporting victims, and participation in campus prevention activities.

My role involved all elements of the deliverable including primary and secondary research, literature review, campaign analysis, data synthesis, written content, and the full graphic design and layout of the document. The color theme was intentionally designed using a teal palette to align with the color scheme associated with Sexual Assault Awareness Month, adding a layer of contextual meaning to the visual identity of the case study itself.

---

Scope

Similar to Case Study 1, this assignment imposed a three-page limit to cover six required sections: background, target audience, formative research, key campaign messages, project evaluation, and theoretical application. The combination of a multi-dimensional campaign and a tight page limit required my disciplined prioritization in both writing and design.

Key Elements Included:

• Research: Sourcing and reviewing the primary study by Hust et al. (2017) from the Journal of Health Communication. This study served as the anchor for every section of the case study, with supporting data drawn directly from the original research.
• Statistical Analysis and Data Synthesis: Identifying and contextualizing the campaign’s quantitative outcomes and then recreating the data structures from original sources as required by the assignment requirements.
• Graphic Design and Layout: I built the full document in a publication-quality format with a custom statistics callout block, a six-topic message grid, an excerpt image from the original mini-magazine, and typographic hierarchy maintained across all pages.
• Theoretical Analysis: I applied the Social Cognitive Theory and Social Norms Theory to assess the campaign’s design and execution which also included a nuanced evaluation of where the theoretical framework was not fully supported in the case and why.

---

Process

I was given a list of a few campaigns to select from. I chose this study because unlike other public health campaigns where outcome data is limited or anecdotal, this intervention used a pre- and post-test experimental design with four conditions and four measured outcome variables. This provided me with a level of analytical depth that made the theoretical application section genuinely substantive and not just speculative.

The research came first and thankfully, the Hust et al. (2017) source was detailed enough to anchor the background, target audience, formative research, and evaluation sections without requiring additional supplementary sourcing. The class textbook, O’Keefe (2016), provided the persuasion theory framework that was needed for the theoretical application section. Once I figured out the analytical argument, the writing and design came together pretty easily.

The design process was intentional from the start. The teal color palette was selected to connect the visual identity of the case study to Sexual Assault Awareness Month, giving the design an added layer of meaning.

Key Decisions Included:

• Opening with a contrasting and pop of color full-bleed header image and a statistics callout block to immediately establish the scale of the problem before the background section began.
• Building a six-topic message grid to display the interconnected campaign areas clearly, which was a more effective design choice than a simple list of content.
• I incorporated two real images from the “Freshmen Unleashed” mini-magazine to give readers a visual reference for what the entertainment-education format looked like in real-life.
• I felt that framing the theoretical application section around a specific analytical argument instead of a general description of Social Cognitive Theory and Social Norms Theory ultimately produced a more analytically defensible and interesting section.

---

Lessons Learned

What went well:

The theoretical application section was the strongest analytical section of the case study. The argument that neither Social Cognitive Theory nor Social Norms Theory was sufficient on its own and that the combined condition’s success confirmed that each theory addressed a different dimension of the persuasion process, went meaningfully beyond a surface-level theory description. Instead, I felt that it engaged with the actual experimental findings to make a specific, evidence-grounded claim, giving the section more analytical weight.

Also, the design choice to build around the teal palette was effective in two ways. First, the palette gave the document a cohesive and professional identity that is distinct from the other Case Study. Second, it connected the case study to Sexual Assault Awareness Month in a way that felt more purposeful instead of decorative, and by adding a footnote in the References section, acknowledging that specific intent, added transparency about the design decision.

The main challenge:

The main challenge for this piece had more to do with how to frame the parts; how to present the statistics, how to describe the target audience’s vulnerability, how to discuss the campaign’s treatment of sensitive topics, etc. This required judgment about tone that went beyond the analytical part. It was important that I maintained depth without losing sight of the human stakes that are involved with sexual assault prevention.

Outcomes:

This project deepened my understanding of entertainment-education as a communication strategy. Specifically, how the entertainment-education format is only as effective as the theory built into the messages.