Krista McCrimmon, Creative Director at Johnson & Sekin Tells Us More
A few weeks back, The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) made history today by unveiling the new “Scout Me In” campaign that for the first time includes girls, as well as boys, in its iconic Cub Scout program. This summer, all kids are invited to say, “Scout Me In,” as they join the fun, adventure and character-building opportunities found in Cub Scouts.
The “Scout Me In,” campaign created by Dallas ad agency Johnson & Sekin, shifts the perspective by showing what it’s like to be a Scout from a kid’s point of view. Instead of simply showing Scouts participating in activities, the campaign brings the young viewer into the middle of the action – from fishing, biking and canoeing to launching rockets and making slime – where they get even closer to the experiences that scouting brings to life. 
Over 3,000 girls across the country have enrolled in the Early Adopter Program ahead of the full launch later this year. “Scout Me In” reinforces that the BSA’s mission and core values in the Scout Oath and Scout Law, to be welcoming and inclusive for both boys and girls.
AdChat DFW thought we should delve deeper into the idea behind the campaign, so we interviewed Krista McCrimmon, Creative Director for Johnson & Sekin, to learn more about it.
AdChat DFW: This is an exciting campaign. How did Johnson & Sekin create it?
Krista M: We have an incredible group of people here who were very excited to work on it. It’s obviously an historic brand and it’s the part of the fabric of American culture and a huge opportunity for an agency of our size. There was an RFP and quite a few agencies responded to it. We made it to the final rounds and they just really loved what we were doing.
AdChat DFW: How did you go about positioning it?
Krista M: We wanted to do something unique from the point of view of the Scouts themselves to make it feel more inspirational, more aspirational and more involved than the stuff they’d been traditionally pushing out.
AdChat DFW: What was their original tagline?
Krista M: Their original tagline was “Prepared. For Life”… which sounds a bit archaic and not particularly engaging or exciting. We wanted a CTA that was something that could be very actionable, something that felt colloquial so that scouts may actually use it. Like, “Camping this weekend? Yeah man, scout me in, that sounds great!”
It also needed to speak to the inclusivity of girls joining the program, but still be used across the brand and across the board for the future. It needed to embrace families, boys, girls and also gay and trans kids. We wanted something that felt very “of-the-moment” from this movement but that could go forward very easily.
AdChat DFW: What kind of feedback are you getting about BSA adding girls?
Krista M: Overall it is mostly positive feedback, but there is some negative press. What is interesting to me is that there hasn’t been a lot of commentary directly about the tagline, which I love because that makes me feel that it feels very natural to people. It hashtags like crazy which of course is very important for the launch of any campaign, especially one of this magnitude. People are just embracing it, we’ve seen it all over social media.
AdChat DFW: What elements did you create for the campaign?
Krista M: So far, we did new positioning for the Boy Scouts, we helped them with the process of renaming the organization itself, Scouts BSA. We created the tagline, are in the process of producing some broadcast. The bigger current deliverable is an outward facing campaign that includes print media, like recruitment flyers Scout leaders use for their individual dens and packs. Hopefully we will be doing more media in terms of online and outdoor, but the initial request was to get the boots-on-the-ground material for the kids to put in their backpacks to take home to Mom and show her that this is what they want to do.
AdChat DFW: What’s the big idea behind the campaign?
Krista M: The bigger angle for us is really just changing the perspective both literally and figuratively of what being a scout is. Even within the organization, they said “We know people don’t think we are cool, and we do really cool stuff.” Changing the overall perception of the scouts was the overall request, and a really exciting challenge.
(PRNewsfoto/The Boy Scouts of America)
(PRNewsfoto/The Boy Scouts of America)
About the Boy Scouts of America
The Boy Scouts of America provides the nation’s foremost youth program of character development and values-based leadership training, which helps young people be “Prepared. For Life.®” The Scouting organization is composed of nearly 2.3 million youth members between the ages of 7 and 21 and approximately 960,000 volunteers in local councils throughout the United States and its territories. For more information on the Boy Scouts of America, please visit www.scouting.org.
