✶ Student Work ✶ Hypothetical Campaign ✶

The "BE You" campaign by Buffalo Exchange is designed to celebrate Pride month and is part of the company's social engagement campaign project, "Buffalo Exchange Makes Change."

The campaign is primarily aimed at LGBTQIA+ individuals and their allies. Since fashion is an essential part of self-expression for many queer individuals, Buffalo Exchange, a thrift shop filled with "New & Recycled Fashion" at multiple locations, seemed nicely fitting for this campaign.

The campaign's primary objective is to celebrate the lives of queer youth and raise awareness of the struggles they face. Younger queer individuals are often more susceptible to discrimination and face difficulty escaping toxic environments. These environments can be dangerous for them to come out, and they may be forced to mask themselves for most of their daily lives.

No matter how they present themselves, one’s queerness remains an integral part of their identity. For many LGBTQIA+ individuals, queerness takes up a significant portion of their identity, and not being able to express themselves can be a considerable struggle, especially at the age when they are figuring out who they are. With the range of subtlety and expressiveness it provides, what better platform for individuals to express their queerness and feel comfortable in their own skin than fashion?

The advertisement is designed to draw attention to the cause with an uplifting, joyful, and hopeful tone, which leads to a "call to action" at the end. The CTA phrase is "Buy One to Give One(get one to give one)", which will run for the entire Pride month: when a customer purchases a Buffalo Exchange original merchandise created for the BE You campaign, clothes of equivalent monetary value will be donated to a queer youth organization such as The Trevor Project.

To be inclusive of closeted LGBTQIA+ individuals and allies who may not be safe or free to view queer content, the advertisement hints at LGBTQIA+ Pride rather than be more explicit about the campaign's target audience.