Situation: After researching the best way to make a lasting impact on education in Texas, H-E-B Chairman and CEO Charles Butt established a leadership institute for public schools with the goal that every classroom and campus in Texas thrives under dynamic and inspired leadership. The $100 million investment came from his own pocket.
Strategy: From the announcement of The Holdsworth Center’s creation in January 2017 to the launch of social media assets, a content marketing campaign and the Center’s first annual leadership event, we have helped create and execute a comprehensive integrated communications and marketing strategy with the goal of making The Holdsworth Center top of mind when it comes to high-quality educational leadership. In a short amount of time, we developed a branding campaign and mapped out an earned media communications plan kicked off by a successful press conference and rounded out by a long-term regional and national media outreach plan. Understanding the nature and behavior patterns of our audiences – both participants and financial and legislative supporters – we then got to work executing a social media and larger content strategy, working collaboratively with the Holdsworth team to produce quality content including highly engaging video, the EdThink blog, and strategic content, all crafted to be both inspiring and useful to sitting educators, business leaders and others with a keen interest in education. Email marketing supports both the overarching content strategy as well as lead-generation to continue to grow the participant and supporter database for future success.
Our partnership has grown to include event marketing with the launch of The Holdsworth Center’s annual leadership event, ElevatEd. To drive registration at the inaugural event, we crafted an integrated approach encompassing earned media, a paid media plan, paid social media promotion, a sophisticated email marketing campaign, and a thoughtful digital outreach and SEM program.
Impact: A successful press conference led to $1 million worth of press coverage from every major daily newspaper in the state to national publications such as Education Week and the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The Center’s social media assets average 3,500 engagements and 800 link clicks per month and growing, and one month after launching our email database acquisition campaign, more than 4,600 had signed up to receive emails from the Center.
