The US has more mass shootings than any country. After each tragedy, Americans take over social media to voice their concerns and vent their frustrations. Although 93% of the public believes something must change, few actually write directly to their representatives to ask for change, which 96% of Congress staffers reported to be the most powerful way to influence policy.

Our goal was to help Change the Ref—a non-profit founded by Manuel Oliver, father of Joaquin Oliver who was killed at the Parkland, FL, school shooting—to affect real change. Online posts don’t influence policy change. Handwritten letters do. 

So, we created postsintoletters.com that searches for social media data about gun control and turns it into powerful letters to Congress. 

These letters aren’t written in just any handwriting. They are written in the handwriting of Joaquin Oliver, a student who was killed at the school shooting in Parkland, FL, and the son of our client Manuel Oliver, who founded Change the Ref. To rebuild his handwriting, we performed extensive research, analyzing thousands his handwriting samples from the notebooks he had with him the day he was killed.

By integrating social media, print ads, and direct mail, we were able send thousands of powerful messages to Congress fighting for gun control, written by someone who can’t fight anymore. 

Since the Posts Into Letters campaign launched, our target audience has created and sent over 60,000 letters to Congress.Through social engagement, the project has earned 1MM impressions per day. And since the beginning of the campaign, 33 gun safety bills have been signed into law in 20 states in 2 months. 

The leaders of the American gun control movement, Emma Gonzalez, David Hogg, and the March for Our Lives students, strongly endorsed the initiative on social media. Their passionate posts urging their millions of followers to participate bolstered engagement even more.

Posts Into Letters became a movement that is now changing the way Americans petition government for change—by turning overlooked social media posts into more effective handwritten letters and sending them to Congress. The campaign is ongoing. Through continued social media efforts, we are aiming to engage a larger group, and as a result, reach more Congress members with a message from their constituents about gun control that’s impossible for them to ignore.