Background
 Creating awareness for any issue on national scale requires careful planning, persistence, and a crystal clear media pitch. For the past three years, True Insight has been responsible for the marketing and PR of the National Foster Care Month.
This annually returning event during the month of May is a partnership set up by fourteen child welfare organizations. By building on each year's experience, True Insight has worked toward this year's ten-fold increase in visibility for the NFCM, driven by unprecedented exposure in national media such as Time magazine, Dr. Phil, and the Today Show.
Challenge
In 2004, True Insight was hired by the National Foster Care partners to secure national press coverage, supplement outreach in select local markets, demonstrate the viability of the NFCM as a national platform for issues affecting children in care and to cultivate relationships with media outlets for future events.
Three years ago, NFCM did not have the same visibility as other, more established child-care related platforms such as Adoption Month. NFCM spokesperson, the actress Victoria Rowell (The Young and Restless) was one of the factors contributing to the campaign's higher visibility that year. Despite a limited time frame, True Insight managed to reach 68.23 million people in 46 states with print and broadcast media, such as NPR, Parade, Univision, and the New York Times.
New York Times, June 3, 2004:
"This scene of parental solidarity speaks to a mini-revolution in foster care, one being led by New York City. Fifteen years ago, it would have been hard to place a place in the nation that encouraged foster parents and birth parents to meet, let alone talk."
"We only had three months and a small budget for the campaign," explains True Insight president Daniel Stein. "But by being very entrepreneurial, we got the results we wanted. Leveraging our existing contacts in New York paid off considerably when The New York Times decided to run an article on foster care. The paper had already been focusing on some serious problems regarding the issues that were going on in the city, but they saw the National Foster Care Month as a positive area of encouragement. Their article was very helpful in leveraging coverage by other media outlets."
Parade magazine, May 2, 2004:
May is National Foster Care Month, and Americans are being asked to honor the families, social workers and others who struggle to improve the lives of these kids, most of whom were put in foster care due to parental abuse or neglect."
Blue Ribbon ceremonies rewarding those involved in foster care created visibility in select local markets (Kansas, Massachusetts, Texas, Washington State) where the need was greatest, and where press material was already available.
Strategy
With a time frame of nine months for the 2005 campaign, True Insight was able to focus on the larger context of the National Foster Care Month by reinforcing its brand ID. Seeing the successful trickle-down effect of national coverage translating into regional and local exposure,
True Insight reduced its local coverage from its marketing strategy for the subsequent campaign in 2005. Based on the company's experiences in the previous year, more effort was put into brand development, Spanish language accessibility, expanding the website and streamlining the strategic message among the campaign's fourteen partners and their publicists to avoid competition in pitching to the media.
"We really needed to engage all the partners," says Daniel Stein. "Part of our work is selling the partners on the idea of the campaign, why it would benefit everyone involved. In the wider context of child welfare, foster care is not on everyone's to-do list. For social workers and organizations with limited resources, it tends to be a subset within their priorities."
True Insight incorporated the Blue Ribbon into the NFCM tree logo - a unified visual that allowed partners to maximize the brand ID within the framework of their own communications. True Insight also redesigned and expanded the website to support year-round visibility. This strategy paid off when Yahoo named fostercaremonth.org "Yahoo! Notable New Site", which lead to 2.3 billion page views a day. The total impressions from the 2005 campaign doubled from 2004's 68.23 million to 144.84 million. Regional coverage was given a boost by NFCM spokesperson Victoria Rowell.
Bangor Daily News, Maine, May 22, 2006:
"More than 400 parents and children gathered under sunny skies Saturday at Fort Knox State Park to celebrate Maine's foster and adoptive families and were treated to a special appearance by a soap opera star who is familiar with the state's foster care system. Victoria Rowell [...] spoke with various state officials about the continuing need to support the more than 500,000 children living in foster care across the country."
Results
By starting work on the 2006 campaign even earlier than nine months before the event, True Insight was able to refine the core message that there are hundreds of ways to get involved in foster care. The aim was to increase visibility by 10%. By having more time to create a consistent message among the partners, True Insight and its PR partner, Kitchen PR, were able to pitch successfully to national and long-lead media.
After two years, the NFCM finally had a national kick-off event in the form of a gala evening at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, celebrating spokesperson Victoria Rowell's tour of art made by people in foster care. Rowell was joined on the red carpet by fellow actor Samuel Jackson (see photo above) and California State Assembly Woman Karen Bass.
The longer preparation time, synchronized core messages, and persistent follow-ups lead to an unprecedented amount of national coverage, surpassing the original goal with an increased number of impressions of 108%, resulting in 291 million impressions. In or around the month of May, an impressive line-up of national media outlets devoted time to foster care issues, such as Time magazine, Dr. Phil, the Today Show, Univision's Despierta America, the Ziggy cartoon character and the Dear Abby column - both of which are syndicated in around 600 newspapers.
Time magazine, June 5, 2006:
"Over the past few years, however, the number of 12- to 18-year-olds adopted out of foster care has risen sharply, from 6,000 in 2000 to 10,000 in 2004. That's thanks, in part, to financial incentives and intensive campaigns to persuade people to take in some of society's most unwanted children."
By going on a roadshow to present this year's campaign to its partners on a grassroots level, True Insight was able to successfully translate the media buzz generated by the gala event into regional exposure.
"This was a watershed year," comments Daniel Stein. "We articulated that we want to get national attention first and foremost. Ziggy and Dear Abby proved to be the most powerful tools. The editors behind them already knew about National Foster Care Month from the year before. We were more aggressive about getting pro-bono ads in magazines like Pride, Essence and Parade. There was an increase in participation from the partners and we had leveraged our access to New York State agencies. Hopefully next year's campaign can be further expanded to include other child care and family issues by bringing in corporate and media sponsors."
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