Marketing Can Do More Than Sell—It Can Save Lives

By Liz Kline

At Capitol B, we believe marketing is more than just a tool to sell tickets or promote a product. It’s a driver for awareness, understanding, action, and sometimes, it can save lives.

That might sound lofty, but we’ve seen it firsthand.

In 2025, we partnered with the Children’s Advocacy Centers of North Carolina to launch the Hidden in Plain Sight campaign. Its goal: increase awareness of the signs of child abuse and encourage reporting across the state. The stories were real. The signs were subtle. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. Through strategic messaging, targeted outreach, and emotionally resonant creative, we helped bring visibility to the invisible. Because sometimes the children who need help the most are right in front of us, and it takes awareness to intervene. Results thus far are incredibly impactful. There has been a 53% increase in overall website traffic, a 125% increase in traffic specifically to the child abuse reporting page, and campaign click through rates are sitting at 3 times benchmark standards. You can read the full case study here.

In 2024, we worked with the UNC Chapel Hill School of Social Work to promote Youth Mental Health First Aid, a vital program helping teens recognize and respond to mental health challenges in themselves and their peers. Our campaign aimed not only to increase implementation of the program in schools across North Carolina, but also to generate buy-in from legislative and community leaders. Because getting more schools on board means more students who know how to ask for help, and how to offer it. The project generated over 11.5 million ad impressions, 24,000 clicks, and press releases were picked up by over 100 publishers. View the full case study.

And going back to 2016, we were proud to lead the statewide human trafficking awareness campaign for Project NO REST. Our work focused on connecting victims with resources, spotlighting red flags for the public, and giving professionals tools to act. Over the course of the campaign, calls from victims to the national human trafficking hotline in North Carolina increased by 55%. Not clicks. Not likes. Calls from people seeking real help.

“We worked with Capitol Broadcasting to develop a campaign to both reach individuals who were being trafficked as well as to raise awareness of the public of what trafficking looked like and where to go for help. The spots were extremely powerful in connecting survivors to services as well as in generating widespread interest across the state in responding to trafficking.”- Dean Duncan, professor at UNC Chapel Hill School of Social Work shared.

These campaigns don’t just check a box or fulfill a communications plan. They change outcomes. They open eyes. They connect people in crisis with the systems designed to support them.

We have an incredible advantage at Capitol B: access to the deep, statewide media network of Capitol Broadcasting Company, and a team of strategists, storytellers, and designers who care deeply about the communities we serve. We use the same marketing tools and tactics that sell out concerts and drive tourism—but we apply them with a public health lens. We measure our success not just in reach or impressions, but in the lives that may have been changed because someone saw a message, recognized a sign, or made a call.

This is my why. This is what drives the Capitol B team every single day.

So yes, marketing can do more than sell.
It can inform.
It can connect.
It can heal.
It can save lives.

If you’re working on a campaign that deserves to be seen, heard, and felt across North Carolina, we’d love to help you make it happen.