Fatherhood Takes Center Stage
The Problem: There is a crisis in America. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 24 million children in America (1 out of 3) live without their biological father in the home. Consequently, there is a “father factor” in nearly all of the societal ills facing America today. According to the National Fatherhood Initiative when children are raised in a father absent home, the children are at a 4x greater risk of poverty, 2x more likely to drop out of high school and more likely to go to prison. Fatherhood is a big issue and is impacting our children each and every day in ways many people don’t even realize. The creator of the SC Fatherhood & Male Achievement Conference has worked in the fatherhood space for over 20 years. As a Columbia, SC native, he began his career in Columbia, SC as a social worker and served as the coordinator for the first fatherhood initiative in Columbia. As a Columbia native, he wanted to create a conference to educate, enrich and provide resources for fathers and young boys in the state of South Carolina. Having worked under two presidential administrations administering national fatherhood initiatives and grants, he realized the statistics in South Carolina were staggering and there were every few organizations that focused specifically on the family from the entry point of the father. The SC Fatherhood and Male Achievement Conference was created in 2015 with the goal of educating and equipping the men of SC to become better, active fathers.
The Solution: Since the conference was going into its fourth year, the local media were familiar with the event but it was imperative that we created new news angles and get away from the standard interview request. Our interview pitch strategy was storytelling. Instead of using the founder as the subject of the pitch, we used the stories of the young men and their fathers to tell the story. This pitch model worked very well because we were able to secure interviews on each station, each with a different angle and guest. Also since we knew the sessions would be a key component in registration but also media pitching, we created a call for proposals for new topics and sessions three months prior to the conference. This was very successful because it introduced a new target, single mothers and allowed us to highlight session presenters from various walks of life. All of which helped diversify the pitches and ensure success across television and radio. We also used the conference committee members to discuss why they were compelled to work on the conference and why the subject of fatherhood was a critical issue in our communities. Additionally we leveraged the Superintendent of the School District where the conference was taking place, along with the Mayor to talk about the fatherhood issue plaguing our community.
The Results: We were able to surpass the 25% visibility goal and achieved a 125% increase. Our goal was to make sure we received the three television interviews we secured last year but to also pick up the final station in the market, the ABC affiliate and increase our reach via earned radio interviews, outside of the paid advertising on radio. By creating a storytelling pitch model, we secured multiple interviews at all four television affiliates in the market (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC), plus we picked up three additional radio interviews along with an out of market television interview in Charleston, SC. The media strategy also surpassed the registration goal increase of 15% and achieved a 25% increase in registered attendees.
