Steve

Stretching may be the closest thing I’ve found to a fountain of youth. I picked up the habit as a high school hurdler and, while I no longer stretch daily, I still make time for it a few times a week. Even 20 minutes helps keep the creaks and crunches of aging at bay.

Sproles

With loneliness becoming a major public health crisis, I’ve been more intentional in practicing social connectedness and trying to meet up with old friends or putting myself out there to meet new ones. Relationships are like plants: with nourishment and patience, bonds grow deep roots and flourish over time.

Christy

I believe regular, intense exercise is very important to one’s health. Exercising first thing in the morning helps me maintain consistency and builds energy for the day. Since my job is sedentary, I try to incorporate a walk during my lunch as well.

Erin

One of my wellness goals this year has been spending less time on screens and making more time for reading. I’ve always struggled to finish books—I’d read 50 pages, get distracted, and then forget about them. Something always seems to be competing for my attention, so finding a few good page-turners has made a big difference. What I enjoy most isn’t how many books I’ve read, but the slower pace that reading creates. Taking time to sit down with a physical book helps to quiet my busy mind and recharge. It’s become a simple but meaningful way to support my well-being.

Kelsey

The single best thing I’ve done for my wellness in the last year has been adopting my sweet little chihuahua mix, Scampi. He has me taking more walks, engaging with our neighborhood community and waking up happier every day with him cuddled up next to me.

Meghan

To keep myself from getting caught in the endless scroll, I limit my time on Instagram with the app, Be Present. It is a paid app, but I feel it is worth it for the time I earned back.

Anri

For my own wellness, I play this game called Word Hike on my phone. It features a combination of crosswords and idiom puzzles. It helps me work on spelling and vocabulary, but it mostly allows me to relax and wind down at the end of the day.

Lance

For me, wellness is centered on slowing down. I spend the first 15 minutes of every morning in silence with a cup of coffee, giving myself time to think before the day begins. On my commute, I usually listen to Up First or an episode of The Daily, and every Friday morning, I meet college friends at Bernstein’s Bagels for a poppy seed bagel and a coffee before work. Weekends are for exploring St. Johns and North Portland neighborhoods or heading out to Sauvie Island trails and local U-pick farms. Simple routines help me recharge so I can be present in my personal and professional life.

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Kickoff was at noon, and we made our way downtown by about 8:45. I had initially questioned the need to get going before 9, but quickly realized as we approached Pioneer Square that if anything, we were fashionably late. Old Seattle was positively star-spangled. I brushed past shirtless men in eagle costumes (think of that one episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) and was too shy to ask for a photo with some founding fathers. There were “USA!” chants. Given what it means to live in the U.S. today, the full-throated displays of national pride felt… pretty weird!

Perhaps in an ideal world soccer would be apolitical. The best part of the World Cup is how it brings people from different cultures and backgrounds together for the love of the game. Many such heartwarming moments have recently charted on Al Gore’s internet, such as Scottish fans taking over Boston and playing the bagpipes on the famous cop slide, and Mexican fans embracing their new Korean brothers. Even TSA weighed in on the fun, issuing special notices for foreign fans traveling home from the U.S. with large amounts of ranch dressing. One comes away from all of this believing that the majority of people are not only inherently good, but also actively excited to learn about, embrace and celebrate our differences. These days, I find I often need to actively remind myself that I really do believe this, too. This World Cup has been a welcome reassurance that most of humanity is actually OK. Similarly, I like to think most soccer fans have come away from their time in the U.S. understanding that the people who live here aren’t all as insane as our political output would have the world believe.

Of course, with any competition between nations, especially when FIFA is in the captain’s chair, it is impossible to completely set politics aside. Some national teams have earned international scorn because of their long colonial histories, while some players have caught heat for how they have chosen to engage with the politics of today. In fact, in a beautiful way, drinking the haterade can in itself be a global unifier. England’s national team, for example, has managed to unite much of the world in fervent support for whoever they are playing. This social media post by Aldi Ireland ahead of the quarter final game between England and Norway paints a picture of a thousand words. When the U.S. striker Balogun’s red card was rescinded and we lost spectacularly in an embarrassment of a showing against Belgium in the round of 16, the sting of that loss was assuaged by the fact that almost everyone else was happy to see us go. The Belgian team mocked Trump with his signature dance and the world was at peace.

Possibly the greatest unifier in this tournament is the proverbial People’s Princess of the 2026 World Cup, Erling Braut Haaland. This 6’5” blonde behemoth of a man lumbered into our stadiums, living rooms, and social media feeds to steal our hearts away with his on-pitch prowess and his off-pitch good-humored sincerity. He and the Norwegian national team donated the proceeds of one of their World Cup qualifying matches to Doctors Without Borders in Gaza. He bought and donated the only surviving copy of a medieval book of Viking sagas to his local library for the public to enjoy.He returned from the U.S. with his head held high and with a gorgeous taxidermy of a raccoon holding a bottle of whiskey. Haaland and his signature blonde locks have become a de facto symbol of healthy masculinity. Three weeks ago, I had no idea who this man was. Now I’m one of 60 million followers on Instagram. I might have to become a Manchester City fan.

In a world divided, and despite the best efforts of a few Fat Cats up top who always try to line their pockets and spoil the fun, this World Cup has proven to be an overwhelmingly positive reflection of the best of humanity. Power to the people, long live the beautiful game, may it NEVER come home, and God save Erling.

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Most grandparents will tell you it’s hard to describe what that feels like until it happens. There is the immediate joy, of course. The tiny fingers. The quiet moments of simply watching him sleep. Even the unmistakable smell of a newborn that somehow manages to transport you back in time and forward at the same moment.

Mostly, though, there is a renewed appreciation for beginnings.

When you look at a newborn, you see unlimited possibility. Every future seems available. Every path seems open. At the same time, you are reminded how fragile those possibilities are and how much care, attention and love are required to help them grow.

That tension feels familiar these days.

Like many people, I carry tremendous optimism about what life can offer. I see it in young people beginning careers, families starting new chapters and communities working together to solve difficult problems. But I also carry concern about the challenges that surround us. Climate change. Political division. A world that often feels more fractured than connected.

Holding both realities at the same time can be difficult. Yet watching Lincoln begin his journey has reminded me that optimism remains the choice worth making.

As Father’s Day approaches, I’ve found myself reflecting less on my own experience as a father and more on the opportunity to watch my son become one.

My wife and I tried to be all in as parents. Like most parents, we didn’t do everything perfectly, but we believed deeply in showing up, doing the work and putting our children at the center of our attention and effort. Today, I see that same commitment in Cameron and his wife, Avalon.

They are embracing the joys and responsibilities of parenthood with dedication, patience and a kind of unfiltered joy that is inspiring to witness. There are sleepless nights, new challenges and plenty of uncertainty. Yet there is also purpose.

Fatherhood has always been a crucible. It teaches patience. It teaches sacrifice. It teaches responsibility. Most of all, it teaches that some of life’s greatest rewards arrive slowly, shaped through thousands of small moments of care and consistency.

Watching my own son discover those lessons has become one of the greatest joys of my life.

There is something profoundly moving about seeing someone you helped raise step confidently into a role that once felt entirely new to you. It’s a new experience as a parent, one I couldn’t fully appreciate until now.

Parenthood may be the purest example of unconditional love most of us will ever experience. It asks a lot of us. It changes us. It reveals strengths we didn’t know we had and priorities we didn’t know we needed.
It also offers lessons that extend beyond family life.

The people we admire most, whether in our families, communities or workplaces, are often those who commit fully. They invest in others. They stay present when things become difficult. They understand that meaningful results rarely happen overnight. They are willing to play the long game.

Those lessons feel especially relevant to me today.

In fact, Lincoln’s arrival has given me another gift. It has further strengthened my commitment to staying healthy and active for the years ahead. I want to be there for the soccer games, school events, conversations and adventures that are still to come. I want to experience as much of his life as possible.

This weekend, I’ll travel to Austin to see Lincoln for the second time. Cameron and Avalon are there building their family, and I’ll have the privilege of bringing my 86-year-old mother to meet her great-grandson for the very first time.

Four generations together.

When I think about that moment, I’m reminded that life is ultimately a story of beginnings, endings and everything we pass along in between.

Lincoln won’t remember this visit. But I will.

And as Father’s Day arrives, I’m feeling grateful for the chance to witness another beginning, to celebrate the fathers who are embracing the role today and to appreciate the enduring power of family, hope and unconditional love.

To all the dads out there, Happy Father’s Day.

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Click here to learn more about our work and the highlights from the past year.

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By centering trauma-informed marketing strategies, we create campaigns that are not only eye-catching and engaging, but also build trust, spark connection and uplift communities.

Our Trauma-Informed Marketing Framework

Here’s how we bring trauma-informed language into our marketing work in Oregon and beyond:

• Safety – Audiences are emotionally safeguarded through transparent, empathetic and culturally informed messaging.
• Trustworthiness – Content is accurate, consistent and clear.
• Collaboration & Peer Support – Messages are co-created with communities and people with lived experience, while uplifting trusted resources.
• Empowerment & Choice – Stories focus on strengths, use inclusive language and validate real concerns.
• Cultural Responsiveness – We acknowledge historical and systemic barriers while making space for community voice and traditions.

Trauma-Informed Communication in Action

Here are a few ways our trauma-informed approach has shaped real campaigns:

REAL ID

Recognizing that systemic barriers affect many groups, including rural residents, naturalized immigrants, older adults and transgender/gender-diverse (TGD) Oregonians, we prioritized cultural and historical awareness from the start. Through our community engagement, it became clear the TGD concept needed additional work. So, working directly with members of those communities, we refined scripts and casting to ensure the tone and visuals aligned with lived experience. This commitment to trustworthiness and empowerment built authentic connections that drove results: during the first two months, the TGD spot led our social media campaign in conversions, earned the second highest click-through rate and encouraged more than 205,000 Oregonians to get their REAL IDs. This underscores a key truth about community engagement: when we listen deeply and create with community rather than for them, we create messages that resonate far beyond any one group.

Read more about how community-led insights drove REAL ID success in Oregon.

988 Oregon

Balancing trauma-informed language with compelling storytelling is always a tightrope. You need emotional pull without sensationalism, memorability without harm. With 988, we proved both were possible with ads like Sadie and Someone to Talk to. We leaned into empowerment, collaboration and choice, centering hope as our north star. Community advisor groups helped shape and refine each concept, ensuring nuance and community awareness every step of the way. Instead of crisis tropes, ads focused on real turning points and everyday stressors. And each ad ended with a note of hope, even when issues weren’t neatly resolved, reflecting the real-world role of 988: connection, not quick fixes. The result was stories that respected lived experience and drove awareness. In the first 2 ½ months of the campaign, 988 contacts in Oregon rose 17%. Together, this work shows that trauma-informed storytelling doesn’t limit impact, it amplifies it.

Read more about Connect to Hope: our marketing campaign to grow awareness of 988 in Oregon.

Rethink the Drink

Rethink the Drink (RTD) took a different approach to alcohol messaging: no scare tactics, no blame. Instead, we chose an empathetic, non-judgmental tone, posing questions about alcohol use while making space for reflection without shame, both at the individual and community level. We worked closely with OHA partners including CBOs, county health departments and health equity coalitions to shape campaigns, co-creating content that spoke to people where they were, including a full Spanish-language and Spanglish campaign that connected powerfully with bicultural Latino/a/e/x audiences. The results were astounding. Focus groups consistently described RTD as believable, empowering and respectful, and a recent survey found that 66% of people in Oregon agree alcohol should have less of a presence in their community—proof that safety and trust matter when changing minds.

Read more about Rethink the Drink, a first of its kind campaign.

The takeaway

Trauma-informed communication isn’t just a framework—it’s a practice that makes marketing more inclusive, respectful and effective. By centering safety, trust, empowerment and cultural humility, we create campaigns that don’t just reach people, they resonate with them. For organizations seeking ethical, community-rooted and trauma-informed marketing, this approach offers a path to authentic impact and lasting change.

The post Empathy in Marketing : Why Trauma-Informed Language Matters appeared first on Coates Kokes.

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We tend to think about alcohol problems in extremes. The drunk driver. The college party gone too far. The person who can’t make it through the day without drinking. These are the stories that dominate headlines and public policy. But they distract us from a quieter—and more common—problem hiding in plain sight.

Excessive drinking has become one of Oregon’s most socially acceptable health risks.

More than 1 in 5 adults in Oregon report drinking excessively. Most aren’t “alcoholics.” They aren’t even the people you might think of when you hear the phrase “problem drinker.” They’re your coworkers. Your neighbors. They’re making dinner, doing laundry, holding down jobs. And they’re drinking in ways that significantly increase their risk for cancer, heart disease, depression, and alcohol-related death—often without realizing it.

Because society has made it very easy not to notice.

That’s the paradox: the more normal something becomes, the less we question it. Alcohol is one of the only drugs we treat as both reward and ritual. It’s how we unwind, how we bond, how we celebrate. It’s stitched into baby showers and grief rituals, kids’ birthday parties and yoga brunches. In many ways, it’s become the emotional duct tape of American adult life. And when something is that ever-present, it’s easy to cross the line into higher-risk use—without even knowing where the line is.

A Quiet Question, Not a Loud Alarm

After identifying and researching this problem, the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) selected Coates Kokes to create a brand and campaigns to help people begin to see what had become invisible. Together, we launched Rethink the Drink, the first campaign in the U.S. focused on reframing excessive alcohol use—not as a personal moral failing, but as a normalized behavior with serious health and community consequences.

Getting the tone right was job one. We didn’t wag fingers or sound alarms. Instead, we asked questions. We employed irony. Tools that nudge people to reconsider, not retreat.

We worked closely with OHA partners including community based organizations, county health departments and health equity coalitions to shape campaigns that reflected real lived experiences. We developed creative that showed diverse audiences and a wide spectrum of drinking behaviors—not to judge, but to reflect. And we spoke to people where they were, including a full Spanish-language and Spanglish campaign that connected powerfully with bicultural Latino/a/e/x audiences.

Culture Change Starts with Recognition

The results of the campaign were striking. Nearly half of Oregonians surveyed recognized Rethink the Drink. Among those who drink excessively, recall was even higher. People described the campaign as direct, believable, and non-judgmental. And exposure to the campaign increased the number of people having conversations about their drinking.

One viewer summed it up this way:

“I was really pleased that it wasn’t heavily judgmental… They didn’t have to present them in a crisis point. They were just normal people that were reflecting on their drinking… Someone in an average social situation… I thought that was really appealing.”

That’s the shift we were hoping for—not shame, but awareness. Not fear, but reflection.

Today, 66% of Oregonians surveyed agree that alcohol has too much presence in our communities. That’s not an accident. That’s culture change in motion. And like any meaningful shift, it starts by asking a different question than the one we’ve been handed.

Not: Is alcohol bad?
But: What kind of role do we want alcohol to play in our lives, our families, and our neighborhoods?

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But what happens after that?

That question sat at the heart of our recent campaign with Yamhill County, a project designed to address their steady rise in DUII arrests—especially those involving alcohol, which make up about 78% of cases in the county.

The challenge? Build a campaign that cuts through a normalized drinking culture, encourages safer choices, and doesn’t alienate the wineries or visitors that help define and support the region.

Straight Talk, Local Voice

We knew this campaign couldn’t be preachy. Instead, we focused on a few key truths:

• Most DUII arrests involved local residents—particularly men aged 21–45
• Many visitors come to Yamhill County to enjoy wine, and these folks represent a secondary audience for the campaign
• People aren’t making bad choices because they don’t care—they’re making them because it’s easy to fall into a routine, and hard to see a better option

Our creative leaned into dry wit, straight talk, and a familiar face: the Yamhill County Sheriff.

Across billboards, social media, digital and audio platforms, we ran a series of punchy, pointed lines that prompted folks to reconsider before they grabbed their keys.  Every line ended with a clear, consistent source: A message from the Yamhill County Sheriff’s Office.

By putting the Sheriff at the center, we grounded the message in local authority—while giving it a human voice. Not too humorous, but also not too serious. Just straight from the people who see the impact firsthand.

Beyond Awareness: Nudging a Cultural Shift

Raising awareness is only the first step. What we were really trying to spark is a moment of pause. Create a little friction in a habit that’s gone unchallenged for too long.

That meant striking the right tone—one that recognized the realities of rural life, the pride of the community, and the tightrope people walk between convenience and safety.

It also meant walking our own tightrope: delivering a message that challenges behavior without shaming people. Supporting the culture of Yamhill County, while nudging it toward something better.

We know that change doesn’t happen overnight. But culture shifts when enough people start asking new questions—and making new plans.

That’s where we started. And that’s where Yamhill County is headed.

The post “Make a Plan for After Your After-Work Beers”: How we tackled drunk driving culture in Yamhill County appeared first on Coates Kokes.

When life feels overwhelming, where do you turn? Last year, few people in Oregon would have said 988, the three-digit number formerly known as the National Suicide and Prevention Lifeline. A statewide survey at the time found only 21% of a random sample of Oregonians were familiar with 988, and most weren’t sure what to expect if they reached out. Would their privacy be protected? Were their struggles “serious enough” to warrant support?

These uncertainties made it clear that any campaign to raise awareness and build trust in 988 would need to be trauma-informed, hope-centered and demonstrate that this service is for everyone—not just in moments of crisis, but also for mental and emotional well-being, substance use concerns and for support when a loved one is struggling.

From the beginning, our work with Oregon Health Authority was guided by community voices. Leaders from disproportionately affected groups shared their perspectives through interviews, focus groups and standing advisory circles. Their insights made the messaging stronger, ensuring it was culturally relevant, approachable and grounded in lived experience. The creative direction emphasized privacy, counselor training and free access, while showing a variety of scenarios that reflect the diversity of Oregonians’ lived experiences and needs.

On July 16, the campaign rolled out statewide. From billboards and buses to streaming platforms, grocery store screens, radio and TV, the message is meeting people in Oregon where they live, work and unwind. By the end of the year, the 988 Oregon campaign will generate well over 100 million impressions, making it impossible to miss and easier than ever to remember.

And today, on 988 Day especially, we’re reminded why this work matters. It’s not just about awareness: it’s about connection. It’s about making sure everyone in Oregon knows that no one needs to struggle alone. Hope, and help are just three digits away.

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With this blog post we are announcing and publishing our fifth Certified B-Corp and Oregon Benefit Company Annual Report. As we continue to navigate the currents of change, we invite you to read more about our journey this past year and join us in looking forward to building an even more resilient, collaborative future.

Check it out here.

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