Marketing That Makes a Difference: The Early Learning Project

As marketers, we all hope to work on projects that truly make a difference in someone’s life. Being part of a positive change and telling stories that connect with our audience is rewarding. When it happens, it’s truly the best part of working in this business.

Recently, we were fortunate enough to complete one of those projects for the Michigan Department of Education’s (MDE) Office of Great Start. The goal of this organization is to support families in ways that help all children living in Michigan thrive. They oversee programs that promote the health of children from prenatal to 8-years-old. Our assignment with them was to get the word out about the importance of early learning for children from birth to three years old.

Starting with Research

The project began with some intensive research into the issues surrounding early learning. Following our research, we concluded that a traditional media campaign would not be the most effective way to get the word out. For one thing, the target audience is one that is constantly changing as new babies are born and older ones advance beyond three years old.

What was needed was a self-sustaining communication solution that would allow a stable group of influencers to share information and resources with parents, caregivers and child care providers in an on-going manner. Once we came to this conclusion, new solutions and opportunities presented themselves and our strategic path was clear.

Enlist Early Learning Influencers

We developed a “train-the-trainer” model in which parent influencers talk to parents about why 0-3 matters and provide ongoing guidance on supporting learning and development. Working closely with MDE, we identified the best parent influencers and discovered that many of the groups were already part of the MDE network or could easily be reached through the network. With a focused target we assessed the communication channels they used to talk to parents and existing communications aimed at parents.

Below is a video we created to stress the importance of early learning to parents of children zero to three.

Now, we just needed to engage our influencers with the right messaging and encourage them to become part of our outreach campaign. Armed with insight, we created an assortment of  marketing materials (internal training materials, promotional videos, infographics, blog posts, content calendars and email marketing templates) that could be used to talk to parents and shared directly with parents to help reinforce the key messages.

Our approach both fulfilled the campaign objectives and provided our influencer groups with much-needed materials to advance their own core messages about early childhood engagement and learning. Through collaboration and by taking a top-down look at the objectives, culture and landscape, we were able to build an early learning communication solution that met the unique challenges and rallied a strong network behind an important mission.

Heather Pence, feeling good about doing good