Achieving the Spirit of JA

Junior Achievement (JA) of South Dakota has had a passionate group of adult business leaders for over 50 years. But how exactly to you capture the passion of the JA students they serve? How do you capture the excitement of kids?

JA helps kids prepare for life on subjects like credit scores, budgeting, insurance, economics, entrepreneurship, career choice and more. Part of what has made JA so successful through the years is their teaching method. All of the topics are taught through games and fun interactive activities. This maximizes learning and meets the kids where they are in being receptive to it.

For the 50th Anniversary JA celebration, leadership approached us about creating a video for the event. Many adults and leaders were already on board with being interviewed and singing the praises of JA. This was great, but HS really wanted to get the children involved – to highlight the fun of JA in video.

As our creative team sat around discussing this, we kept coming back to the logo.

“It’s like a flight of stairs, right?” someone said.

“Yeah, so?” another chimed in.

“Let’s build a big one so kids can climb on it.”

And that was really the genesis of our idea. If we can show kids having fun, interacting with a set and fun shapes, we demonstrate the JA learning method. We also relax the kids before interviewing them by encouraging them to play. We knew kids were most creative when left to explore, not directed and produced.

The last thing we wanted was talking heads. Instead, we got very happy kids.