Best of 2017: Print/Outdoor/Design #10: What Are KFC's Colonel and Geico's Gecko Doing in This High School Yearbook?

Through New Year's, we'll be counting down the best work of the year in TV/Film/Branded Content, Print/Outdoor/Design and Interactive/Integrated as our picks of the day.

At #9 in Print/Outdoor/Design is Sacramento's high schooler Hannah Hightman's super-creative money-making venture: to feature characters from ads, like Colonel Sanders and the Geico Gecko, in high school yearbooks. Her enterprising effort earned Hightman a place in AdAge's Creativity 50 this year.

Original story here:

An enterprising teenager might have unlocked the secret to reaching elusive young consumers: high school yearbook ads. Seventeen-year-old Hannah Hightman is getting loads of local media attention in the Sacramento area for spearheading a move to get portraits of the Geico Gecko and KFC's Colonel Sanders included alongside student pics in this year's edition of Stockton's Bear Creek High School yearbook. She also got permission to sprinkle in photos of celebrities from Lady Gaga to Donald Trump, according to Sacramento's ABC10.

"She hit the jackpot when Kentucky Fried Chicken agreed to include the Colonel and pay for his picture, complete with a pose in the yearbook wearing a Bear Creek lapel pin," the TV station reported. The cash helped pay for yearbook production. KFC agency Wieden & Kennedy provided an assist, the shop confirmed to Ad Age. "We were impressed by the idea and her tenacity, and were happy to help her make it happen," said Eric Baldwin, the agency's executive creative director in Portland. Her own high school actually passed on the idea, so she took it to Bear Creek, where her mom teaches, according to the reports.