A Familiar Face for Healthier Choices
The project started with a friendly husky named Healthy Harry and a big idea: create a youth prevention campaign that could help children understand the value of healthy choices. Mississippi Public Health Institute (MSPHI) wanted to turn that early concept into something memorable, useful, and flexible enough to reach children in classrooms, at home, and throughout local communities.
The idea for Healthy Harry and the Healthy Choices Club came from the lasting power of character-led public education campaigns. Think Smokey Bear, but focused on helping Mississippi students make healthy choices. MSPHI wanted a character young children could remember, trust, and grow alongside. The message needed to feel simple and positive for younger students, with room to introduce more complex prevention topics as they got older.
They needed a digital marketing agency that could create the campaign strategy and carry it all the way through design, print, and web. The impending back-to-school season added another layer to the work. We had to move quickly to capitalize on the opportunity to get this work out there without creating something that would feel finished after a single event or school year.
“Everyone is so excited and impressed with the work the Seventh Scout team has done. Healthy Harry and the Healthy Choices Club have already grown into something much bigger than we first imagined, and we see so much more possibility ahead. We now have a strong foundation for reaching more students, supporting more educators, and involving more families in conversations about healthy choices.”
Starting With Strategy
It would have been easy to jump straight into the worksheets, stickers, and promotional pieces. Those were tangible, useful, and needed quickly with the new school year fast approaching. But before Harry could show up in a classroom, we needed to understand who he was and what he stood for.
We split the project into two connected parts. The first focused on strategy: defining Harry’s personality, the campaign’s audiences, age-appropriate messages, and a long-term vision for the program. The second turned that thinking into materials MSPHI could begin using right away.
That strategy gave every deliverable a job beyond launch day. A worksheet could introduce a lesson now and become part of a larger classroom kit later. A character created for an elementary student could mature with that student. A landing page could house the first resources while making room for whatever came next.
Building the Healthy Choices Club
Healthy Harry became the founder of the Healthy Choices Club and the first familiar face students would meet. He leads with kindness and responsibility, and he values teamwork, but we never wanted him to feel like the “perfect” character who always has the right answer. Harry gets discouraged. He feels unsure. He makes mistakes. Then he learns what to do next, just like the students he is there to support.
We also knew one husky could not carry every health lesson on his shoulders. Skylar Squirrel encourages movement, goal setting, and perseverance. Bailey Bunny focuses on nutrition, sleep, self-care, and everyday routines. Oliver Owl helps students think through decisions, emotions, consequences, and prevention. Each friend gives MSPHI a natural way to discuss a different aspect of healthy living.
We developed the characters’ roles, personalities, teaching areas, and catchphrases, then wrote sample storylines for grades 1, 4, and 6. For students on the younger side, the stories begin with familiar topics like breakfast, bedtime, and big feelings. For older students, they move into peer pressure, prescription drug safety, stress, and digital choices. Harry and his friends can change with the audience rather than remain frozen at a single age level.
"We often create target audience personas as part of our marketing strategy work, but they’re mostly for internal purposes. This project gave our team the opportunity to apply our persona-building skills and experience in a very direct and public-facing way – literally creating characters and personas to deliver the content and messaging. Bringing these characters to life and building a comprehensive campaign for MSPHI was a fun and rewarding experience."
Designing for Different Stages
Anyone who has spent time with children knows that a first-grader and a sixth-grader are very different audiences. The campaign needed to respect that difference without losing the idea holding everything together: every healthy choice helps us grow.
For students in grades K through 2, the language stays simple, playful, and tied to a clear outcome. Students in grades 3 through 4 can take on more responsibility, take on opportunities for teamwork, develop healthy routines, and make thoughtful decisions. Students in grades 5 through 6 are starting to explore healthy habits through stories about nutrition, physical activity, friendship, sleep, emotions, and kindness. Parents and caregivers need helpful context for their children as they grow. Educators and community partners need language connected to learning, prevention, and community health.
We also set firm boundaries around what Healthy Harry would never do. The campaign does not use fear, shame, scare tactics, negative labels, or overly clinical language. It talks about healthy habits, positive decisions, confidence, and asking for help. That gives MSPHI a clear gut check for every story and resource developed in the future.
"What a joy it was to work on this project with MSPHI! It brought together three of my favorite things: Great people, creative thinking, and the opportunity to make a positive impact. It’s exciting to know that Healthy Harry and his crew can continue to grow alongside Mississippi students for years to come, meeting them with the right message at every stage."
A Visual System With Room to Grow
Harry needed to feel like part of MSPHI while still having enough personality to catch a child’s attention. We started with MSPHI’s steel and aqua colors, then gave each character their own color family. The font and type system separates general campaign information, character headings, and speech, keeping the materials playful without making them difficult to read.
We brought those decisions together into a branding style guide that covers voice, audience-specific messaging, approved language, campaign taglines, color, typography, and required elements. These branding style guidelines mean an internal team member or future partner does not have to guess which shade of green belongs to Harry or whether a message sounds too clinical. The answers are already there.
"What a fun project and a lesson in character building! I loved the opportunity to bring Healthy Harry and his friends’ stories to life through creating coloring pages, word searches, and crosswords that help further cement the key learning points. These aren’t campaigns we get to create for every client, so it was fun to dream up a new world!"
Bringing the Campaign Into Classrooms and Homes
With the strategy in place, Harry and his crew were ready to leave the page. We created print marketing materials for multiple grades, including coloring pages, word searches, crossword puzzles, and character-based activities. Each puzzle was developed with a specific grade range in mind, with vocabulary and difficulty levels progressing as students get older and begin facing different challenges than they did in past years. Stickers and promotional-item designs gave schools and community partners additional ways to introduce the club and keep the characters visible after activities ended.
The Healthy Choices Club website became the home base for it all. Our custom website design gives students a fun introduction to the characters while making it easy for adults to find resources. Through custom website development, educators and families can download materials for grades K through 6, share how they are using the campaign, submit feedback, and tell MSPHI what topics they want next.
That connection between print and digital matters. A handout can start a conversation in the classroom. The website can help that conversation continue at home, provide an educator with another resource to try, and give MSPHI a place to keep building without having to start over each time.
"My family had a home in Mississippi for decades and my roots in the Southeast run deep. This work is personal to me. Being able to put Seventh Scout’s talents and resources toward helping Mississippi children and families build healthy habits is a meaningful way to give back to a place that has been a part of my life for so long."
A Foundation for the Next Healthy Choice
MSPHI’s long-term vision is to develop Healthy Harry into a statewide prevention icon supported by classroom materials, school activations, curriculum, and community engagement. That is a big goal, but the campaign now has somewhere solid to begin.
Harry began as a mascot. By giving him a story, a group of friends, a clear purpose, and a place to live online, we helped MSPHI create a campaign that meets children where they are today and keeps the conversation going as they grow.
