Public Awareness and Recruitment

Cultivating Arkansas’ Future

HELPING ASPIRING TEACHERS FIND A PATH TO THE CLASSROOM

Situation

Forward Arkansas, a statewide nonprofit organization working to improve outcomes for Arkansas students, came to us with a significant problem. Their research findings made it clear that Arkansas school districts are facing severe teacher shortages, and there’s a lack of diversity in the teacher workforce, resulting in widening educational equity gaps for students.

To help address these urgent issues, they asked us to implement a full rebrand and public awareness campaign for their Teach Arkansas initiative, a partnership with the Arkansas Department of Education.

Our goal: to increase the number of qualified, certified and diverse teachers in the state, so that Arkansas students can have the effective education they deserve. To achieve it, we had several objectives:

• Create a memorable brand identity for the Teach Arkansas initiative.
• Develop clear messaging to communicate with Arkansans about the initiative’s specific requirements and benefits.
• Provide Arkansans with a user-friendly, comprehensive website with information and resources.
• Inform key target audiences about available resources and assistance through a statewide public awareness campaign.
• Engage community leaders as influencers and program supporters to help reach key target audiences.

Strategy

The first step in our campaign was to rebrand the Teach Arkansas initiative with a new tagline and logo. The refreshed tagline, “Grow Tomorrow, Today,” emphasizes the vital role that teachers play in guiding students to the future and suggests that potential teachers can grow their own futures by pursuing a rewarding career. The accompanying logo amplifies the concept, with an abstract graphic suggesting both upward growth and a path forward to a successful tomorrow for both students and potential teachers.

Next, we developed a comprehensive website where potential teachers could find a wealth of information about degree programs, alternative certification, financial assistance and more. One key feature of the site is a tuition calculator, which shows that a debt-free path to teaching is possible at most of the state’s colleges and universities. The site also includes a form to connect with career coaches who can guide potential teachers on their path to licensure.

Once the website was developed, it was time to share the campaign far and wide. Our strategy for awareness was multifaceted, including:

• Public relations
• Website design/development
• Earned media outreach
• Paid media
• Digital media
• Paid social media
• Organic social media

Results

Arkansas students deserve great teachers, and we were proud to play a part in addressing our state’s teacher shortage by showing Arkansans how they can become the educators that our students need. Our paid digital campaign delivered 5,904,769 impressions – 113.9% of planned, with an overdelivery of 720,487 impressions.

Our public awareness campaign drove 41,754 users to the Teach Arkansas website, and as of September 14, 2022, more than 2,500 people had filled out forms through the site to embark on their path to a career in education.