Bigmouth + babies: Creating a human-centric campaign
September 2025
Social stewardship is a particularly hot topic at Bigmouth this year—making space to talk about and show up for people and the planet. We recently shared some concrete ways we deliver on that commitment, both externally and for ourselves internally.
Considering our impact on people is baked into every aspect of our human-centric agency. This impact doesn’t just show in the end result of our work: It’s reflected in the way we navigate every step of a project.
We’d like to show you what that looks like in practice. Let’s take a deep dive into the ways we applied human-centric social stewardship during our work with the Chicago Department of Public Health’s Illinois Safe Sleep Program.
It’s our job to meet people where they’re at with relevant messaging that (hopefully) inspires action toward longer, healthier, happier lives.
Helping Illinois’ infants sleep safer
Sudden Unexpected Infant Death (SUID) is the leading cause of death for babies from one to 12 months old. These deaths are unexplained, and often happen in unsafe sleep environments. Babies should always sleep on their back, in a crib and alone, with no blankets, stuffed animals, pillows or bumpers, to decrease the risk of SUID.
The Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) collaborated with agencies across Illinois to spread awareness about these and other safe sleep practices, especially among higher-risk populations. Bigmouth partnered with CDPH to create a human-centric brand, campaign, website and creative materials that helped the program reach and resonate with parents and caretakers of all ages, races, family makeups, and income levels.
Bigmouth’s longstanding partnership with CDPH includes projects like the Healthy Chicago movement and HIV and the Journey Toward Zero. We understand one another’s communication styles, collaboration preferences and internal workflows; are honest about our needs; and share candid feedback to deliver high-quality results. Our existing relationship allowed us to jump into the Illinois Safe Sleep campaign from a place of trust and a willingness to experiment with innovative ideas.
The Bigmouth and CDPH teams agreed the Illinois Safe Sleep campaign, which would be featured across the city, needed to be informed by and show real Chicago families and infants. Bigmouth started by surveying parents and caregivers across zip codes, ethnicities, ages, genders and income levels. We conducted in-person workshops in English and Spanish to ask questions, test concepts and, ultimately, learn what real parents need to hear and how they want to hear it.
What we learned
Some parents feel like they’re constantly hammered with information about safe sleep practices
Some get mixed messages from different sources
Some feel they were never given the necessary information
Parents described other safe sleep campaigns as fear-driven, intimidating, and judgemental
Quiet on the set: Working with Chicago families and babies
The Illinois Safe Sleep Program required a wide range of campaign collateral, including a website, printed materials, social media posts, videos, digital signage and ads on Chicago buses and trains.
These public-facing materials had the potential to reach every Chicagoan, so the CDPH and Bigmouth teams wanted to ensure those Chicagoans saw themselves reflected back. We knew it was important to recruit real Chicago families and babies for a series of interviews and photo/video shoots.
Safe Sleep has significant crossover with another CDPH initiative, Family Connects Chicago, which provides free, in-home nurse visits to Chicago families with infants born at participating hospitals. During those visits, CDPH nurses share Safe Sleep information with caretakers, along with other resources for babies, birthing parents and families. Bigmouth also partners with CDPH to promote Family Connects Chicago, so the Safe Sleep interviews and shoots were an opportunity to gather stories, images and video for both campaigns.
Assembling a creative team
Recruiting families
What’s the best way to find infant models? Just ask! The Bigmouth team reached out to family, friends and Facebook groups in search of babies 6 months and younger (and their caregivers), specifically seeking a range of genders and ethnicities to best represent Chicago’s diverse population. The CDPH team also worked with its FCC nurses to identify participant families willing to join the campaign.
Victoria Romero, CDPH public health administrator III, spearheaded the shoot from the CDPH side, including recruiting and communicating with nurses and family to ensure a smooth on-set experience. “From the very beginning diversity and inclusion was a very big deal to our nursing team because they have years of experience in the home nursing and visitation programs,” she said. “We are very aware of our target populations, and we want to reflect who we’re seeing in our marketing materials as best we can.”
Creating a supportive shoot environment
The Bigmouth team rented homes across the city to host the photo and video shoots, rather than relying on bland hotel rooms or fake sets. Showing families in real Chicago homes added to the campaign’s authenticity, and gave families a comfortable space to relax and care for their infants in between takes.
Mindful on-set support for both caretakers and infants was crucial to a human-centric experience, including transportation, snacks, gift cards, spaces to unwind and toys to engage older siblings. CDPH nurses, many of whom had visited participants in their own home, were the most important factor.
Speaking directly — and accurately — to diverse populations
Safe Sleep campaign materials, including videos and advertising, were produced in both English and Spanish. But creating content in two languages isn’t as simple as dropping an English script into a translation tool: the writing needed to reflect regional language differences and take a conversational tone.
The majority of Latinos in Chicago and the Midwest hail from Mexico or Puerto Rico, but Romero said the city is experiencing an influx of immigrants from Venezuela and Colombia. CDPH’s Safe Sleep marketing materials needed to use a general version of Spanish that all speakers understand. Images also needed to feature people with a range of skin tones.
A native Spanish speaker was always on set for the shoot to ensure families felt welcomed and included, and to review Spanish scripts for tone and accuracy. Bigmouth engaged translation partner Keylingo to produce inclusive written versions of printed collateral, advertisements and other printed materials. As a human-centric best practice, Keylingo employs native-speaking linguists with cultural experience, who perform tone and intent analysis prior to adapting content.
Supporting your own human-centric creative process
Prioritizing human-centricity throughout the Safe Sleep campaign process required a holistic view of the entire production and every person involved. Little moments of support and intention added up to a huge difference in the final campaign, including 662,000 paid social impressions and 193,000 video ad views.
Lamourt believes human-centric creative work is the core of all storytelling. “We can talk all day about identity, politics, semantics, this or that side — at the end of the day we have the same basic human need and that’s connection,” they said. Campaigns like Safe Sleep fit naturally into that need.
From CDPH’s perspective, Romero advises that health departments looking to produce a human-centric campaign stick to their guns and do what’s best for their communities. Creative partners need to defer to public health experts when portraying diverse populations like Chicago families.
“Reflecting our community in our frontline staff, marketing, approach and messaging help break down barriers to increase likelihood of healthy results,” Romero says.
