Transforming how Blue Campaign mobilizes Americans against human trafficking

As Blue Campaign approached its 15th anniversary, the DHS Center for Countering Human Trafficking (CCHT) partnered with ICF to modernize its national outreach. Together, we refreshed the campaign’s creative and digital strategy to reach broader—and younger—audiences with content that was authentic, relevant, and actionable. The resulting multichannel approach significantly expanded reach and engagement while delivering exceptional efficiency on a limited budget—demonstrating how modern, evidence-driven communications can advance mission impact at scale.

Challenge

“Human trafficking” is a familiar phrase to Americans, but most don’t really understand what it is, much less how to recognize and report suspected cases. The DHS Center for Countering Human Trafficking created the Blue Campaign—a multichannel outreach effort to educate and dispel rumors about human trafficking—to change that.

As Blue Campaign approached its 15th Anniversary, CCHT was looking for a fresh creative strategy that would expand its reach among Americans—particularly young people—with an approach that felt authentic and engaging rather than like a typical government public awareness campaign.

Solution

CCHT partnered with ICF to take the Blue Campaign in a dynamic new direction, recognizing our team’s unique blend of subject-matter expertise, strategic brand building, and tactical communication and marketing skills.

Alongside our CCHT partners, our team developed an integrated, multichannel strategy to reach audiences online, in communities, and during high-visibility national moments. We invested in paid, owned, earned, and shared media tactics to maximize awareness and drive meaningful engagement. And we helped modernize the Blue Campaign’s creative approach, emphasizing authenticity and working with more than a dozen Lived Experience Experts (LEEs) – survivors of human trafficking - to ensure all creative and content was accurate and resonant.

Two notable aspects of the strategy were:

• An Internet Safety Campaign collaboration with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Through story-based social media videos for children, straightforward “what to do now” guides for adults, and classroom-ready resources for teachers, this campaign highlighted online safety risks and trafficking vulnerabilities for children throughout August and September 2025.
• A Back-to-School Multichannel Campaign. Leveraging trusted voices and familiar environments during a critical time of year for young audiences, this campaign had a steady presence across commutes, classrooms, and mobile devices from mid-September through late-October 2025. The campaign’s message, geared toward adults and older youth, highlighted common risks and indicators of human trafficking and how respond to them.

Results

Across all channels, the refreshed Blue Campaign delivered strong year-over-year growth, exceptional efficiency, and measurable mission impact—despite a limited budget.

Paid media efforts generated more than 478 million impressions while maintaining an average cost per click of $0.59, nearly 70% below industry benchmarks. Campaign video content drove broad awareness, with the website’s videos earning more than 30 million views.

Social media performance exceeded expectations. Engagement rates increased 25.7% year over year, outperforming government benchmarks by more than 200%, while the campaign added 17,500+ new followers, a 50.8% annual increase.

The Blue Campaign website saw substantial growth, attracting more than 3 million users and 4.8 million page views—a 189% increase year over year. Targeted outreach also proved effective: the Internet Safety Campaign with NCMEC generated nearly 34 million impressions and almost 200,000 clicks, with roughly half of impressions reaching the hard-to-reach 13–17 age group. Facebook videos featuring animated characters drove engagement rates above 6%, outperforming static creative.

Seasonal efforts delivered standout results. The Back-to-School Campaign page attracted nearly 1 million clicks, becoming the Blue Campaign’s most-visited page in 2025. Overall, the campaign delivered an additional 193 million impressions and $250,000 in added media value.

These results showed our team and CCHT that this type of human-centered, story-driven campaign can exceed reach and efficiency benchmarks to deepen awareness across key audiences without requiring significant additional investment. These lessons will inform the second year of our partnership as we further CCHT’s mission to equip communities nationwide to better recognize, report, and prevent human trafficking.

Final thought

To attract attention in today’s oversaturated media market, agencies need more than a marketing partner. They need one that can pair strategic and tactical talent with a deep understanding of the challenges and political pressures federal agencies face. Working with a partner that brings both assets to the table is the key to successfully reaching target audiences and meeting an agency’s mission and budget goals.