BY5 Early childhood Initiative
Working today for impact tomorrow
BY5 is on a mission to transform the community by connecting Kindergarten readiness to economic success. The more kids who are ready for Kindergarten by the age of 5, the higher a community’s population of graduates and high wage-earners.
BY5 is the region’s leading organization for early childhood awareness.
But there was just one problem:
In 2020, BY5 realized it wasn’t reaching the audiences that most needed its assistance and guidance.
The solution?
BY5 partnered with Intersection to create a months-long campaign to build brand awareness and to get these previously unreached audiences—including low-income families, young single parents, non-parental caretakers, and traditionalist families—to take action in preparing their child for Kindergarten.
Kindergarten readiness begins at birth. But convincing parents to begin preparing their infant for Kindergarten can be a difficult goal to accomplish. Instead, Intersection took a more generalized approach to better resonate with audiences:
Your child’s future begins today.
Because parents and caretakers undoubtedly care strongly about ensuring their child has a bright future overall, this campaign message resonated with audiences better than one that directly pushed for Kindergarten readiness. More than that, the theme created a sense of urgency—the time to care is now. The time to act is today.
The cross-platform campaign included a blitz of branded materials throughout the community, with a campaign-specific hub on the organization’s website serving as the landing page for all calls to action.
The campaign deliverables were supplemented with questions that encouraged audiences to think about how small, daily actions, like reading to their child, can impact their child’s future. This natural spark in curiosity ultimately drove audiences to act—to visit the BY5 website and to begin playing a more active role in their child’s future success.
Deliverables included a direct mail booklet—which integrated all content on the webpage for audiences who had limited or no internet access—delivered to key audiences based on Census data; organic and paid social media posts targeting custom audiences; interior and exterior ads on the city’s public buses, with an emphasis on the buses serving routes to target neighborhoods; radio ads; posters that were hung at community organizations and doctor’s offices; brochures that were distributed to young families at food drives and to pregnant moms during their check-up appointments; and goodie bags (in the form of insulated totes perfect for storing breast milk), filled with a growth chart, magnet, and additional literature, that were given to new moms after the birth of their child.
In the end, Intersection’s efforts helped to increase BY5’s social media following, website traffic, and brand awareness throughout the community—short-term wins that were a side effect of the campaign. The even greater results—an influx of children who are ready for kindergarten by age 5 and the long-term effects associated with that—will be seen in the many years to come.
“Working with Intersection has been so easy and very productive. We received updates and analytics to help guide the campaign. Our account managers were always willing to consider new ideas we brought to the table. They went above and beyond to learn about early childhood issues and were able to tailor the campaign to meet the appropriate demographic audience.
In short, working with Intersection is easy, and we all need a little more “easy” in our lives.”