IPR Strategy
The press likes stories about children who win prizes for significant accomplishments. One of the best examples is the annual Scripps National Spelling Bee held in Washington, D.C. The Kids Talk About God (KTAG) Children’s International Arts Festival will be easier to publicize because there is more to show. Children’s writing and art will be published on the KTAG website for everyone to enjoy. High resolution images of winning art will be available for newspaper editors to download along with publicity releases about the winners on the KTAG website.
In addition to the festival publicity before winners are selected, there are opportunities for publicity after we announce the winners. When a story combines children’s art and writing on an international scale, a significant prize and a local angle, the media where the festival winner lives are almost certain to cover it.
When we announced that 11-year-old Hillary Welborn had won a trip around the world as the winner of the Children’s Bible Contest, television network affiliate crews in Greenville, SC drove 30 miles to cover the press conference in Anderson, SC. One television crew showed up unannounced to film the Welborns as they left for the airport to begin their global trip. The local newspaper ran huge stories with photos before and after the 47-day global journey.
Video footage of the trip was used to produce the Mission Explorers Video Series, which has been used as video curriculum in thousands of churches. This entire series is now streaming for free on the KTAG website.
In addition to many newspapers running the Children’s Bible Contest publicity release, Willard Scott featured children’s art from the contest on NBC’s Today Show. Eight phone lines were jammed as viewers called a toll-free number for contest entry forms. Elizabeth Dole, the late Tom Landry, George Gallup, Jr., Kathie Lee Gifford and others served as contest judges.
By their training and experience, most journalists are skeptics. KTAG has something more credible than internationally known contest judges. It has a website where visitors from around the world enjoy children’s writing, art and speaking without charge. It’s an international forum where children receive recognition from being published.
This ongoing arts festival publicity campaign will have access to 76,000 media outlets and 380,000 staff listings through an electronic database service that keeps media contact information current. The main sponsors of a prize will have their names mentioned in the publicity release, but all sponsors will receive exposure when website visitors come to the festival web page. Festival website visitors who want to know more about a sponsor can click on a sponsor logo that takes them to a sponsor website or a specific web page.
We have our own database of church leaders and Christian educators. That database can be expanded at any time through purchasing lists from companies who specialize in accumulating addresses and emails. The combination of sending targeted communications to ministry leaders with sending press releases to the mainstream press will produce a flood of website traffic to the Children’s International Arts Festival web page. Graphics for arts festival church bulletin inserts, posters and business cards will be available for downloading and printing.
One way we plan to make the festival web page sticky is to let people vote on which art and writing pieces they like the best. Children whose art and writing is featured will be highly motivated to tell their friends to vote for them. American Idol has proven how audience voting can increase ratings.
Click here to review documentation for the Children's Bible Contest campaign.