Goal
Develop a national media relations strategy to support the amplification of the Williamsburg Bray School at Colonial Williamsburg.
The Williamsburg Bray School is the oldest-known structure in the nation in which enslaved and free Black children were formally educated. Working in tandem with our client Colonial Williamsburg, we have focused on assisting the world’s largest living history museum in telling a complete story of the period it recreates.
To prepare for the site’s dedication, we interviewed descendants, took site visits and shot b-roll and interviews to share when pitching media. We sought widespread attention of the historic building, the students who learned there and their descendants. Our goal was to work with a national morning show and attract interest from a variety of prominent national media.
Results
- We developed a relationship with The Today Show and Craig Melvin, who spent a day on-site, resulting in two separate segments – which then were re-packaged for additional airings for Juneteenth and Christmas Eve.
- The Associated Press ran an article about slavery and resilience that migrated to hundreds of outlets.
- The Washington Post published a 3,000-word feature article about education and the schools’ descendants.
- Scripps News did a live five-minute segment about the Williamsburg Bray School restoration.
- We secured additional coverage with national outlets like Essence, Smithsonian, Southern Living, AFRO Newspaper and Black Enterprise.
Why’d It Work?
To ensure a wide swath of coverage, our team crafted five different pitches to customize a variety of angles for the outlets we pitched, each tailored to produce stories to further Colonial Williamsburg’s mission “That the future may learn from the past.”
We crafted press releases, media advisories and historic timelines to further tell the rich history of the Williamsburg Bray School. We media trained a handful of SMEs and prepared them for pre-interviews to ensure the story of the school and its restoration was consistent and on message regardless of the media placement. When pitching, we catered pitches for individual reporters/outlets, focusing on the quality of placement over the quantity.
Hodges prides itself in a focused, polished and intentional media relations approach. We know when a story has national legs, and when it’s best for a local or regional approach. In the case of the Williamsburg Bray School, we knew we had a national story to share. We have spent years building relationships with reporters and producers across national media outlets, and the results of those long-term relationships led to thoughtful storytelling that helped us reach our client’s goal of widespread coverage.