City’s First Readers

Read the City!

City’s First Readers, an initiative of the NYC Council, wanted to create a campaign to promote early childhood literacy to parents of young children. The campaign aimed to spread awareness of local events and resources and also engage parents and children in underserved communities within NYC’s five boroughs. This interactive campaign focused on encouraging parents to build their child’s vocabulary, by reading the city together. The campaign started with a fun graphic of a silly city playground scene with callouts to help create a dialogue between parents and their children. The campaign grew to include famed children’s book illustrators Paul O. Zelinsky and Tomie dePaola. The full campaign consisted of English and Spanish subway ads, bus shelters, street kiosks, urban panels, and social media advertising.