MARCH FOR OUR LIVES PARKLAND STUDENTS | Price on Our Lives | 2018
How $1.05 Made It Impossible for Politicians to Stay Silent / March For Our Lives "Price on Our Lives"
$1.05. That's the total amount Senator Marco Rubio received from the NRA, divided by the total number of students in Florida. It's the orange price tag that survivors of the Parkland high school shooting wore as the "price" of their own lives. The campaign generated 826 media placements and 2.2 billion media impressions, and through the power of math, anger, and design, it irreversibly changed the gun control debate in America.
The problem
On February 14 (2/14), 2018, a mass shooting occurred at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people. In America, the National Rifle Association (NRA) had long blocked gun control legislation by donating millions of dollars to politicians. Even though the majority of citizens supported gun control, the same pattern kept repeating: politicians funded by the NRA did nothing. But after the Parkland shooting, the survivors spoke up. They organized a rally called March For Our Lives, mobilizing millions of people and sparking a movement. This time felt different from the usual reactions—it felt like it could become the foundation for real progress. Following the success of the rally, they founded the March For Our Lives organization and action fund, committing to keep pressuring politicians to pass gun control legislation. And they needed a symbol for the movement—one powerful enough to shift the balance of power from gun manufacturers, the gun lobby, and money-driven politicians back to the people.
The insight
They wanted every American voter to understand what kind of "price" elected politicians were putting on students' lives by accepting donations from the NRA. The idea was to translate an abstract political donation into something anyone could understand: a price per person. The math was brutally simple and brutally powerful—Rubio received $3,303,355 from the NRA, and when you divide that by the total number of public and private school students in Florida, 3,140,167, you get $1.05. That's the moment math became the language of anger. By creating a wearable price tag, they symbolized the price that NRA-funded politicians put on students' lives, showing that they valued money more than those lives. There's real power in making a price visible.
The idea
The price on the tag was calculated by dividing the total amount received from the NRA by the total number of students. The downloadable price tags were distributed on social media through student activists like Emma González (1.5 million followers) and David Hogg (780,000 followers). Students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas wore the bright orange price tags at the March for Our Lives rally. The price tags launched on social media, mobilizing the millions of followers of the student activists to download, print, and share them. The student activists also wore the price tags in interviews and spoke about them at gun control demonstrations in Washington, D.C. The design itself was remarkably simple—but that simplicity is exactly what made it so powerful: anyone could make one, anyone could wear one, and anyone could understand what it meant.
What happened
The price tags were worn and displayed by speakers and celebrities at March For Our Lives events, becoming an established symbol that generated 826 media placements and 2.2 billion media impressions. McCann New York won Gold and Silver Cannes Lions for the campaign. Following the coverage of the $1.05 price tag, a donation page was set up to turn the "price" of students' lives in each state across the country into a donation tool. The price tag idea continued to be used afterward to rally gun control activists at campaign events and demonstrations in states funded by the NRA, becoming a de facto symbol and communication tool for the movement. Since the marches in Washington and across the country following the Parkland shooting, the price tag's message has contributed to the passage of stricter gun control laws, including background checks and minimum purchase ages.
Afterthought
What the ad agency created was a format—the price tag—and a weapon: a simple calculation. But it was the high schoolers who had been in that classroom that day who actually wore it, raised their voices, and marched. The message "the price of our lives is $1.05" was so specific, so visual, and so full of righteous anger that neither politicians nor the media could ignore it. It made me realize that when math, design, social media, and the anger of kids in their teens (10s) come together, society actually moves. I want to keep thinking about what I can do with my own work, too.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Gold 2018
Featured in
- One Number, Right in the Middle of the Ad$6.95, £14,650, 18 seconds, 9 days and 6 hours.
