Fair Housing Symposium
Organization
City of Dayton Human Relations Council
Industry
Government
What I did
Digital marketing, media relations, awareness campaigns, social media strategy, strategic partnerships
Outdoing Last Year
As the Public Affairs Intern for the City of Dayton Human Relations Council, I was put in charge of all marketing, media relations, and promotion for the 2022 Fair Housing Symposium.
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The city first started hosting the Fair Housing Symposium in 2021. After a moderately successful first attempt, the organization wanted to increase the number of attendees and advocate for an increased budget for fair housing enforcement.
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I had a number of challenges to overcome in selling the event, such as:
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A lack of a budget to market the event with $0 allocated for paid promotion.
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Lack of brand consistency on the Human Relations Council's social media presence.
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An inactive Instagram presence which would need to be used to promote the event.
"Lenny is creative, efficient, passionate, and driven. He, without doubt, would be an asset to any organization."
Erica Fields, Director of Place-Based Strategies at Learn to Earn Dayton
Getting It Done on a Small Budget
I prepared to promote this event by writing a strategy guide including taglines for the event, key thought leaders and organizations who could support the event, social media timeline and assets, and plans for media pitching and assets journalists needed.
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Taglines included "Your home is your right," "Impact housing in your community," and "What does fair housing mean to you?"
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To start the promotion of the event, I planned out social media content over the course of three months. This started with a gradual volume of posts notifying our audience of the event date and time and grew in volume to include keynote speaker highlights, audience Q and A's, and promotional vertical video.
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I worked on solving the lack of branding cohesion through creating a new brand guide for the council while planning and marketing this event, using it to form the color basis and taglines for the event.
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I took branding inspiration from the Housing and Urban Development federal agency's brand which includes a dark shade of blue for fair housing (social media graphic sample for reference) which was a strong contrast to the white backgrounds used in the brand guide.
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After this, I started a list of relevant journalists who could promote the symposium and write about it for stories they needed and cover fair housing as a topic.
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Finally, I combed through five past events for the council to generate a list of leads who attended previous city events for an email marketing campaign.
An Event That Shook the City
120
attendees at the event, selling out days before it began. Double the attendance of the previous year. Notable attendees included the chair of PNC Bank, the mayor and city commission, and several nonprofit leaders.
80
landing page clicks from our LinkTree with an 8% estimated conversion rate.
11,000
reached on social media with a 7% engagement rate. Our social media accounted for 20% of all web traffic to register for the event and fostered collaborations with several partners.
5
news articles covering the symposium, secured through timely and relevant media pitches to journalists.
60%
of all attendees registered via email marketing campaigns, representing half of all attendees at the event.
20%+
budget increase due to the success of the symposium, leading to a return offer being extended to me with the budget increase.
Here's What I Made
Design and Copywriting: I managed all social media for the organization during the promotion of the event and lead content strategy and creation as well as copy for all posts. ​
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Design and copywriting samples
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Media Relations: I established rapport with journalists from outlets of various sizes in Dayton and provided concise, well-researched pitches to promote the event and provide them with content.
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Media placement links
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Email Copywriting: I wrote impactful and resonate copy for an email marketing campaign sent out to various leads I generated for the organization.
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Social Media Management and Reporting: I managed all social media profiles during the promotion of the event and reported on all aspects of the marketing campaign to the staff and board of the organization, detailed in the campaign report below.