Earlier today we posted "The 7 States That The Rest Of America Would Like To Kick Out Of the Country," based on a Reddit thread that tried to find which states the country could most easily part with.
The state that got the most upvotes was Mississippi:
Lowest average life expectancy, poorest, fattest, second highest teen pregnancy rate and highest teen birth rate, one of the lowest high school graduation rates and still a lot of opposition to interracial marriage being legal.
Needless to say, the Magnolia State has tried to push back on this reputation for some time.
One reader forwarded us a link to a pro bono ad campaign for Mississippi designed by the Jackson-based Cirlot Agency. The Mississippi ... Believe It! campaign sought to highlight some positive aspects of the state, and after the post this morning we elected to highlight some of them.
The campaign ran from 2006 to 2008, and posters were sent to every public and private K-12 school and every college and university in Mississippi.
The project got positive feedback from The Daily Mississippian from a writer who saw the ads and was finally happy to own up to living in Mississippi, positive press from the Mississippi Business Journal, and scored the creators an interview on "Tell Me More" on NPR.
All images are from the campaign's website.
Here's an ad highlighting prominent writers from Mississippi:
Mississippi has a strong relationship with the music business:
If you think it's awesome when America sends stuff to space, you have Mississippi to thank for that:
Not to mention the medical leaps and bounds that were pioneered in Mississippi:
