RISE-ing to the Occasion Across All Channels

How we used an omnichannel campaign to garner millions of impressions

Overview

In 2022, we partnered with Action for Children, a child care resource agency, to promote an initiative to support the local child care industry through funding to boost enrollment and support educators. This program, called Franklin County RISE, included tuition scholarships for children, signing bonuses for talent and incentives for program administrators. The need for this campaign came from a necessity to raise awareness to the challenges within the child care field in Central Ohio and rally the community behind the cause of supporting the industry.

Our strategy was to design a full-scale omnichannel marketing campaign to reach as many parents, educators, government officials and community members as possible to bring awareness to Franklin County RISE. As a result, we were able to help Action for Children distribute millions of dollars in funding to those in need to bolster Central Ohio.

Image of a young Black boy sitting on the floor with a book in his lap and smiling overlaid with the Action for Children logo

Discovery and Insights

To kick off our research, we conducted stakeholder interviews with three focus groups: parents/guardians, educators, and program administrators. We used these discussions to align on the key challenges each group was facing when it came to child care, understand what messaging would most resonate with them and identify which communications channels they utilized the most. 

The biggest insights we gleaned that informed our planning process were:There was a lot of misinformation about child care funding out in the community that needed to be resolved through education.Most people were frustrated with the current state of the industry.Content with an emotional element would be most impactful. 

We would later cross-check our messaging against these key points to ensure that our content was always aligned with stakeholder expectations.

A Venn diagram showing three sections (Families,Programs, and Educators) overlapping to showcase Ideal State in the middle

Strategy and Tactics

Our overall goal as the Public Relations partner for Action for Children was to get the message out to the community about the RISE program and increase application numbers to help distribute funding and boost the industry. Our strategy for achieving this goal was to connect with audiences through tailored communications across as many touch points as possible to ensure that Franklin County RISE stayed top of mind and those eligible got connected with the resources they needed. Our seven key tactics were:

Paid Media | Organic Social Media | Earned Media | Physical Collateral | Visual Storytelling| Events | Web

Each of these tactics were rolled out on an ongoing basis throughout the course of the 2022 calendar year, as dictated by available government funding. We made the most out of resources we had available to ensure maximum mileage of our campaigns, including cross-pollinating across channels and working at the grassroots level with other local organizations to cross-promote.

Image of a laptop with a slide featuring the Franklin County RISE logo
Image of a laptop with a slide featuring screenshots of news headlines and quotes about the Franklin County RISE program
Image of a laptop featuring a slide with a collage of print materials for the Franklin County RISE Program in various languages
Image of a laptop with a slide featuring a photo of a Black woman standing behind a podium with the state seal of Ohio in front of a backdrop of children's artwork
Image of a laptop with a slide featuring a screenshot of the Franklin County RISE landing page on the Action for Children website
Image of a laptop with a slide featuring a collage of ads for the Franklin County RISE program in various languages

Results

We tracked our success through metrics from each platform totaled for the full flight and compared to industry benchmarks for a 9-month period, including:

Impact

Although we know from these metrics that our efforts performed objectively well, the true test of our campaign’s success was its impact on the community:

6

million dollars in scholarships

764

children served

86

child care positions filled

1.3

million dollars  in incentives awarded to child care programs

60

child care staff members connected with emergency rental assistance

We consider this program highly successful and in addition to these numbers, we also received overwhelmingly positive anecdotal feedback on the awareness our work brought to Franklin County RISE and the child care industry as a whole.