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What NYC's Pre-K Campaign Can Teach Every Mission-Driven Communicator

How a 90-second Spanish-language video — featuring Mayor Mamdani, AOC, and a real family — showed what happens when storytelling is built for the audience, not the organization.

See what this looks like for your org →

Five principles

Lessons from the campaign

The NYC Pre-K enrollment video did everything right. Here are the principles any mission-driven organization can apply — whether you're a city agency, a nonprofit, or a foundation.

1

Lead with community, not credentials

Audience

The video opens with a mother enrolling her child — not the mayor at a podium. When your audience sees themselves in the first frame, they stay. Put the people you serve at the center, not your org chart.

2

Match the medium to the audience

Format

This was a Spanish-language video made for Spanish-speaking families — not a translated English version. When you build content in your audience’s language and format from the start, it lands differently.

3

Make the process the story

Narrative

Instead of announcing that Pre-K exists, the video showed a family walking through enrollment step by step. When you show people HOW to take action — not just that they should — you remove friction and build trust.

4

Use trusted voices authentically

Credibility

AOC appears not as a celebrity endorsement but as a trusted community figure who speaks the same language — literally and figuratively. The right messenger matters more than the biggest name.

5

Design for where people actually are

Distribution

Under two minutes, vertical format, built for Instagram. Not a 15-minute YouTube documentary. When you design content for the platform your audience already uses, you meet them where they are.

The real question

What would this look like for your organization?

These five principles apply to any mission-driven organization. Tell us what you do and we'll map out a content strategy using these ideas — in seconds.

StoryOS

Your story,
mapped in seconds.

Tell us what your organization does and we'll generate tailored content ideas using our StoryStack framework.

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The organizations that win attention aren't the ones with the biggest budgets — they're the ones who understand their audience deeply enough to meet them exactly where they are.

RiseWorks · Public Benefit Corporation