The Harbinger Group - Best Non-Profit / Charity Campaign

Company: The Harbinger Group
Company Description: The Harbinger Group is a thought-leadership marketing consultancy. We help companies and organizations tell their best story. We are deeply experienced in marketing communications and public relations, with significant depth in these sectors: Financial Services, Education, Healthcare, Professional Services and Real Estate.
Nomination Category: Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, & Public Relations Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Non-Profit / Charity

Nomination Title: 2019 and 2020 Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Teaching & Leadership

Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched:
2019 campaign: Feb. 4, 2019
2020 campaign: Jan. 23, 2020

For more than 30 years, Golden Apple, the leading Illinois nonprofit committed to preparing, honoring and supporting exemplary educators who advance educational opportunities for students, has honored Illinois teachers and school leaders with the Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Teaching & Leadership. The program was initiated to recognize Illinois educators for their extraordinary impact in their school communities. Surprise visit announcements take place over multiple weeks every Spring, throughout Illinois. Since the Golden Apple Awards season begins in January or February each year, this award entry includes two awards campaigns (2019 and 2020).

Across the United States, communities face a pressing challenge that has generational implications. In far too many schools, particularly those in economically challenged communities, there simply are not enough high-quality educators to meet the need that exists. In Illinois, the lack of educators entering classrooms has become a full-blown crisis. At the beginning of the 2020 school year, there were more than 1,900 unfilled teaching positions in Illinois. While in the past 10 years, colleges of education in Illinois universities experienced a 50% decline in enrollment.

Given this challenge, The Harbinger Group was tasked with driving awareness of our client Golden Apple’s work to elevate the teaching profession and meaningfully address the teacher shortage in Illinois by leveraging the organization’s annual Golden Apple Awards for Excellence in Teaching & Leadership.

The Harbinger Group's team promoted Golden Apple Awards finalists and eventual award recipients through surprise visits at their school in 2019 and virtually in 2020, which we planned and marketed on behalf of Golden Apple. Each award recipient was surprised with the award, after having gone through an intensive process of applications, classroom visits and interviews during the finalist stage. Each finalist does not know if they are a recipient of the award until the surprise visits in the spring.

The Harbinger Group's strategy was to leverage the various public-facing announcements and finalist stories generated throughout the Awards process to increase awareness of Golden Apple and their work to elevate the importance of the teaching profession statewide. This strategy included blending extensive media relations for print/online and broadcast outlets with social media promotion, paid social media advertising and e-mail marketing.

Given that the select educators are surprised with the Awards, much planning takes place to keep the news confidential. In 2019, as in previous years, the recipients were surprised in their classroom by Golden Apple, family members, colleagues, students, etc. In 2020, the planning process was even more complex due to the COVID environment and teachers working remotely. Instead of the typical classroom surprises, the Golden Apple team orchestrated some surprise visits via Zoom with colleagues, students and family members virtually attending. Other surprises took place via outdoor parades in front of the recipients’ schools.

Print/Online/Broadcast Media Relations

Prior to and during the surprise visits, The Harbinger Group pitched stories to a targeted list of local media outlets throughout Illinois, focusing primarily on markets in which Awards finalists work and live. The ask was to cover the personal and professional stories of the educators and later their selection as award recipients, which is revealed during surprise visits at their schools.

Social/Digital Media

To better engage Golden Apple’s audience, The Harbinger Group's team promoted and produced a Facebook Live stream of the Celebration of Excellence featuring awards finalists. In addition, we used video posts for each surprise visit to announce the award recipients. We used Facebook advertising and boosted each video immediately. Videos were then posted to Twitter, Instagram and YouTube to increase the reach across social channels.

E-mail Marketing

After the surprises, The Harbinger Group’s team sent e-mails to each school, City Council, PTO, and alumni groups with links to the videos, photos and press releases of their respective educator, with encouragement to share it on their social media feeds, newsletters and websites.

Results of 2020 campaign, which reflect increases from 2019 campaign:

100% increase year-over-year in media coverage (217 media mentions)
9/10 of the top performing Facebook posts in the past three years were achieved during Surprise Visits 2020
47% increase year-over-year in social media engagements
20% increase year-over-year in new followers across platforms
30.7K shares of earned media placements on social media
119 notes of congratulations submitted to honorees via campaign website

Supporting Materials (Attachments Included)
CoverageBook Highlights - 2019 Finalists and Surprise Visits
CoverageBook Highlights - 2020 Finalists and Surprise Visits
2019 and 2020 Analytics Reports for Earned and Social Media
2019 Surprise Visits Highlight Reel

Supporting URLs

-2019 and 2020 Press Releases: https://www.goldenapple.org/news/category/Awards
-URL to additional videos and photos of the 2019 surprise visits, for each award recipient from the Golden Apple Awards broadcast can be viewed here: https://www.goldenapple.org/2019-award-recipients
URL to additional videos and photos of the 2020 surprise visits, for each award recipient from the Golden Apple Awards broadcast can be viewed here: https://www.goldenapple.org/2020-golden-apple-award-recipients