The Association of Schools of Public Health had a big problem raising money and attracting new graduate students. Nobody seemed to understand what public health is, much less how it makes a difference in our daily lives. Answering that question became a social guerilla campaign called THIS IS PUBLIC HEALTH.

The campaign was launched with a $5,000 PR budget. We printed 40,000 stickers, had photo and film shoots, built a site in-house that leveraged Google Maps open-source API and Flickr’s community tools.

Students at 17 member schools place stickers on examples of public health in their communities. They take photos of those examples with their digital cameras and upload them to Flickr. The students geotag the locations where they took the photos and add them to the THIS IS PUBLIC HEALTH group. We even created a video tutorial to assist less tech-savvy students.

The photos then appear on a Google Map in the THIS IS PUBLIC HEALTH microsite, allowing users to explore how public health improves quality of life in their own neighborhoods. In addition, users can explore submitted photos in Google Earth or join the discussion at Flickr.

Sample student-submitted photos from the Flickr pool.

Since launching the campaign, Associated Schools Of Public Health have made the campaign the centerpiece of their marketing efforts. They've expanded the campaign to over 1,000 public health and stuent organizations in 45 countries, printing over 750,000 stickers in 36 languages. They've even created an iPhone application to streamline the process of shooting and submitting photos without the need for physical stickers.

Creatives: Daniel Bremmer, Brian Tafel and Peter Coretez. Creative Director: Marty Cooke. Site photography: Anthony Blasko. Promo video: Francisco Aliwalas. Backend scripting by ASPH.