New client win: California Department of Industrial Relations 

We’re excited and honored to announce one of our newest partnerships. 

Civilian was awarded a 48-month contract with the California Department of Industrial Relations (DIR) to provide media-buying strategies for its Heat Illness Prevention, Protection from Wildfire Smoke, Wage Theft Is a Crime, and Women in Construction campaigns. 

Every year, California workers are harmed by heat, smoke, stolen wages, and missed employment opportunities—not necessarily because protections don’t exist, but because information about those protections hasn’t reached them in ways they trust. 

That’s what makes this work so important. Public awareness campaigns are often treated as communications challenges. But they’re also access challenges. Protections only work when people know they exist—and information only works when it reaches people through compelling and credible messengers and channels. 

DIR exists to help protect California workers. As DIR’s new media planning and buying partner, Civilian will help ensure critical information reaches workers in the most effective ways possible.

That means thinking carefully about where people get information, whom they trust, and what barriers might prevent them from taking action. We’ll reach workers most likely to be left behind—including farmworkers in the Central Valley, warehouse employees in the Inland Empire, and domestic workers in Los Angeles. 

Each campaign focuses on a different issue—heat illness prevention, protection from wildfire smoke, wage theft, and economic opportunity for women entering the trades. But they share a common goal: helping workers understand that their rights are real, protections exist, and support is available. 

This is the work Civilian was built to do, and we can’t wait to get started.