Every day, community violence intervention (CVI) professionals are building trust, navigating conflict and helping create safer communities, often without widespread awareness of the impactful work they do. Their stories are at the heart of the latest work from the Ad Council's "Agree to Agree" campaign, developed in partnership with Translation to raise awareness of CVI, an evidence-informed approach that helps prevent violence before it happens.
Through powerful storytelling and the voices of CVI professionals themselves, the campaign shines a light on the benefits of CVI and the people working behind the scenes to help their communities thrive.
In the conversation below, I speak with Translation CMO Chaucer Barnes about the insights, creative strategy and authentic partnerships that brought this work to life, and what the industry can learn from elevating the voices, experiences and expertise of those closest to the work.
Michelle Hillman: What drew Translation to this work, and why was it important to help illustrate the power of community violence intervention through “Agree to Agree?”
Chaucer Barnes: Our press spends a lot of time talking about violence, but we barely know anything about the people who are working behind-the-scenes to ensure it never happens. Every day CVI practitioners are doing the difficult work to keep communities safe, particularly without the visibility or recognition that comes with other professions dedicated to public safety or service. This campaign gave Translation the opportunity to put these peacemakers on a pedestal and show the public the people who are behind prevention, bringing visibility to their work.
MH: Community violence is a complex and nuanced issue. How did your team approach creating work that could resonate with a broad audience while staying true to the realities of the issue and centering the real people and communities impacted by violence?
CB: Authentic storytelling starts with proximity. The full campaign was developed with input from CVI leaders and practitioners in order to keep the storytelling grounded in their strategies and experiences. Rather than centering violence, we centered the moments of intervention, whether that is a conversation or conflict. By focusing on these encounters, the audience doesn’t have to understand the complexity of CVI to understand its impact.
MH: Because CVI is not widely known or understood by the public, increasing awareness was a big part of why we wanted to do this campaign together. What did your team learn from the CVI professionals, and how did those learnings shape the creative strategy and storytelling?
CB: We learned the crux of their work is rooted in trust. They are in these communities and neighborhoods building relationships. We used this learning to inform the creative strategy. As a result, the storytelling showed what intervention looks and feels like up close: through the practitioners’ eyes. The tension, the humanity and ultimately the possibility of a different outcome. We wanted CVI not to be about an action or viewed as a tool, but to be about the people.
MH: What was the key insight that informed the creative strategy for these PSAs?
CB: Our creative strategy was to make CVI’s power of human transformation impossible to ignore. When we think about public safety, we often think about what happens in response to violence or conflict such as a police officer responding to the incident or EMS providing care. However, there’s another side of that story: the human interactions that can change a person’s life before they ever reach that point. We wanted to bring awareness to those interactions and show that sometimes transformation starts with one person having the credibility and trust to reach another.
MH: Creators have played a central role in this work, with trusted voices like Devon Rodriguez, and Najee Rayne helping introduce audiences to CVI. Why are creators and other trusted messengers uniquely positioned to help spark conversations around CVI?
CB: This isn’t a product we’re asking people to buy or an event we’re asking them to attend. It’s an issue affecting communities across the country, and that requires a different kind of storytelling. For a story like this to resonate, people need to hear from voices they can trust and can bring humanity to an issue that can otherwise feel complicated. Creators have built relationships with their audiences that allow them to open the door to conversations people might not otherwise engage with. While reach gets you seen, trust gets you heard. And when you’re asking people to learn more on an issue like CVI, who tells that story matters just as much as how far the story travels.
MH: What do you think inspired creators to get involved with this project, and how did partnering with CVI professionals shape the stories they wanted to tell?
CB: This is an issue that affects communities across the country, and I think creators recognized an opportunity to use their platforms to bring greater attention to the people working to address it. Partnering with CVI professionals gave them a direct connection to the work and the lived experiences behind it. The practitioners brought the expertise and authenticity while the creators helped extend those stories to audiences who may otherwise never encounter them.
MH: As marketers and communicators look to make an impact on society’s most critical issues, what lessons from this work would you share with the industry?
CB: The people closest to an issue have an understanding the rest of us can’t ideate our way into. Integrate them into your process early, and don’t arrive with the story already written. Our job isn’t always to invent the story. Sometimes it’s to recognize the one already happening and give it the platform it deserves.
MH: Looking ahead, what do you hope this work demonstrates about the power of creativity, culture and storytelling to drive meaningful social change?
CB: Creativity has the power to shape culture and drive collective action. As an industry, we use storytelling to build affinity for brands and products. That same tool should be used to shape new perspectives and move people around ideas that matter. The opportunity isn’t just to reflect culture, but to contribute something meaningful to it.