Illinois Cares for Kids Puts Nat King Cole at the Heart of Childcare
Illinois Cares for Kids launched 'I Got Love' in July 2022 as the first statewide advertising campaign promoting affordable early childhood education and care resources available to families across Illinois, created by Chicago agency 1o8 under the auspices of the Office of Governor J. B. Pritzker.
The campaign addresses a clear public need. Illinois Cares for Kids functions as a centralised digital resource where parents, grandparents, caretakers, teachers, and childcare providers can locate every programme, subsidy, and service connected to early childhood development in the state. Prior to 'I Got Love', no single coordinated advertising effort had communicated the breadth of that offering to residents across Illinois. The inaugural campaign set out to change that by meeting families with warmth, accessibility, and cultural resonance rather than bureaucratic instruction.
At the centre of the campaign sits an animated video built around a fresh, modern reinterpretation of Nat King Cole's classic 'I Got Love', performed with contributions from Illinois artists and musicians. The campaign also ran bilingually, with a Spanish-language companion execution titled '¡Siento Amor!', ensuring the message reached the full demographic range of Illinois communities. According to 1o8 Agency, the media plan spanned online video, connected television, local broadcast, streaming audio, digital display, digital out-of-home, social media, and paid search — a fully integrated deployment designed to generate both broad awareness and direct-response action across the United States market.
The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100, reflecting strong creative distinctiveness and effective channel integration within the government and education category.
Illinois committed substantial public investment to early childhood stability and recovery during the campaign period. According to Illinois Gov, the state reported a cumulative investment of approximately $978 million in early-childhood stability and recovery funding since March 2020, and announced a $54 million increase in early-childhood education funding in August 2022, the same summer 'I Got Love' launched. That scale of financial commitment required a communications strategy capable of converting awareness into enrolment, not simply broadcasting the existence of government programmes.
The strategic insight underpinning 'I Got Love' is that families do not engage with childcare resources because they distrust government communications or find them inaccessible, not because resources are unavailable. Research framing from the campaign, as documented in the Shorty Awards case-study entry, positioned Illinois Cares for Kids as a destination rather than a bureaucracy — a one-stop shop where families could search for providers, access funding, and understand their options without navigating multiple government portals. That reframing demanded creative work that felt inviting rather than instructional.
In the United States, public-sector early childhood communications frequently struggle to differentiate from information-dense competitor platforms. Services such as Child Care Aware of America and state-level competitors like Illinois Action for Children both operate digital resource hubs targeting similar audiences across Illinois. Against that landscape, 1o8's decision to anchor the campaign to a beloved piece of American musical heritage — Nat King Cole's 'I Got Love' — gave Illinois Cares for Kids an immediately distinctive emotional register that neither information-first competitors nor standard government advertising typically achieve.
The 'I Got Love' creative execution centres on a fully animated video that reinterprets the Nat King Cole classic through a contemporary lens specific to Illinois communities. The animation style is warm and character-driven, designed to reflect the diversity of families across the state while maintaining the optimistic emotional tone the campaign strategy demanded.
Music production for the campaign was handled by Squeak E. Clean Productions, as reported by Reel Chicago, bringing professional studio craft to what could otherwise have been a functional government spot. Animation was produced by Sarofsky, the Chicago-based motion design and visual effects studio, whose involvement gave the spot a production quality more commonly associated with consumer brand advertising than public-sector campaigns. The combination of Squeak E. Clean's music direction and Sarofsky's visual execution elevated the campaign well beyond the category norm for government education advertising in the United States.
The creative team at 1o8 was led by Executive Creative Director Jen Bills, with Creative Directors Noel Margonza and Alexandra Zajac shaping the concept, and Senior Art Director Fernando Augusto overseeing visual development, according to the Shorty Awards case-study entry. Producers Jenny Napier and Krisi Olivero managed production across a campaign that also incorporated a bilingual Spanish-language version, '¡Siento Amor!', using the same animated framework adapted for a second cultural audience. Brand Strategist Charlotte Weller and Head of Client Management Teresa Kuruvilla are also credited on the project, per the Shorty Awards documentation, reflecting the depth of the team 1o8 assembled for this inaugural statewide effort. The deliberate use of Illinois-based artists and production partners throughout the campaign reinforced the local identity of the platform at every level of the work.
The 'I Got Love' campaign produced measurable, rapid audience response in the United States market. According to the Shorty Awards case-study entry, IllinoisCaresforKids.org recorded a 1,694 percent increase in website traffic following the campaign launch. Within the first two weeks specifically, the Shorty Awards documentation reports a 200 percent increase in site visitors, a 125 percent increase in page views, and a 65 percent increase in searches for early-childhood programme providers — indicators that the campaign drove not passive awareness but active information-seeking behaviour among Illinois families.
The Shorty Awards case-study entry also reports that enrolment in several state-funded educational programmes returned to pre-pandemic levels during the campaign period, though no specific enrolment figures or measurement methodology are provided in publicly available documentation. The directional finding is nonetheless significant in the context of a government education campaign whose primary objective was converting awareness into programme utilisation following pandemic-era disruption.
The general market video asset accumulated more than 1.9 million views, as documented in publicly available video metadata. For a statewide government campaign in the education category operating without a commercial product incentive, that figure reflects meaningful organic and paid distribution reach across Illinois and beyond. The campaign's integrated media architecture — spanning connected television, local broadcast, streaming audio, digital out-of-home, and paid search — provided the channel coverage necessary to sustain the traffic response the results document. The Clapboard Score of 71 out of 100 reflects the campaign's effectiveness within its category and the strength of its creative and strategic integration.
'I Got Love' is the first statewide advertising campaign for Illinois Cares for Kids, launched in July 2022 by Chicago agency 1o8 under Governor J. B. Pritzker's office. The campaign promoted affordable early childhood education and care resources available to Illinois families through an animated video built around a reinterpretation of a Nat King Cole classic.
Chicago agency 1o8 created the campaign. Founded and led by Aalap Shah, with President Joe Valentine and Executive Creative Director Jen Bills among the senior team, 1o8 developed the concept, strategy, and media plan for this inaugural statewide Illinois government campaign, as documented in the Shorty Awards case-study entry.
The Nat King Cole classic 'I Got Love' gave the campaign an immediately warm and familiar emotional register. According to 1o8.agency, the goal was to position Illinois Cares for Kids as an inviting resource rather than a government portal, and the song's cultural resonance helped reach diverse Illinois families across a fully integrated media plan including broadcast, digital, and streaming.
According to the Shorty Awards case-study entry, the campaign drove a 1,694 percent increase in website traffic to IllinoisCaresforKids.org. Within the first two weeks, site visitors rose 200 percent, page views increased 125 percent, and searches for early-childhood programme providers grew 65 percent, with enrolment in several state-funded programmes returning to pre-pandemic levels.
Animation was produced by Sarofsky, the Chicago-based motion design studio, and music was handled by Squeak E. Clean Productions, as reported by Reel Chicago. Both companies are Illinois-based, consistent with the campaign's deliberate use of local artists and production partners throughout the statewide early childhood education effort launched in 2022.
Yes. The campaign included a bilingual Spanish-language companion execution titled '¡Siento Amor!', using the same animated framework as the English-language spot. According to the Shorty Awards case-study entry, the bilingual approach reflected 1o8's strategy to reach the full demographic range of families across Illinois through this government early childhood education campaign.
.webp)
Creative Collaboration Platform: The Backbone of Modern Creative WorkWhat is a creative collaboration platform?Clapboard defines a creative collaboration platform as the operational core for today’s distributed creative teams. This is not a collection of digital collaboration tools stitched together; Clapboard’s system
Understanding the Creative Production MarketplaceWhat is a Creative Production Marketplace?Clapboard defines a creative production marketplace as a structured ecosystem where brands, agencies, and production talent converge to execute video, advertising, and branded content at scale. Unlike the legacy agency or freelanREAD FULL ARTICLE
The Urgent Need for a Creative Production Operating SystemWhy Traditional Creative Production Models Break DownClapboard sees the creative production landscape shifting under pressure. Content velocity is no longer a buzzword—it’s a mandate. Modern advertising demands relentless output across dozens of channels, each wREAD FULL ARTICLE
