BIG | Ed Farm

But while Birmingham is thriving in many ways, the legacy of segregation has created an opportunity gap with generational impact. Birmingham City Schools struggle to get students prepared for the workforce of the future, and many adults remain underemployed.

Enter visionary leadership from Tech Birmingham, who had an idea to make a generational statement by fostering technical education for Birmingham’s most disadvantaged students. Leaders approached tech giant Apple, who’s CEO, Tim Cook, hails from south Alabama. Knowing their big idea would get amplified with his involvement, they took the fledgling but growing concept called Ed Farm to Cupertino to see if Apple would want to engage. And they did – catapulting this effort into a transformative initiative that combines innovative digital-centric curriculum with practical, hands-on classes, offering opportunities to underserved children and adults.

Big was hired to create a brand for this new, Apple-backed education initiative and to create an event to publicly launch Ed Farm in a way that earned media attention, excited the community and embraced the future of technology throughout Birmingham.

Objectives:

• Create a unique, inspiring brand identity/logo/marketing assets for Ed Farm to unveil at its headquarters on Feb. 27, 2020.
• Engage a targeted 250 public and private business leaders, influencers, community members and city school student attendees with an experiential launch event on Feb. 27, 2020.
• Generate additional community participation in Ed Farm’s Teacher Fellows, Student Fellows and Pathways programs by April 2020.
• Enhance website traffic from 16 on Feb. 26 to at least 3,000 site visits post Feb. 27, 2020 event.
• Earn onsite and/or subsequent media coverage for the Feb. 27, 2020 event from a targeted 15 primarily Birmingham-based outlets*

Brand Strategy: Elevate Ed Farm’s unique purpose through the creation of a captivating, effective visual suite.

In developing brand strategy, it was important to understand Ed Farm itself. The program would equip educators in schools and communities with tools and strategies that support active learning for all students, including providing opportunities for students of all ages to learn to code using Swift, Apple’s easy-to-learn coding language.

Coding lines became the essence of our brand identity, and we integrated a bright color palette to evoke a sense of tech and education. In addition to the brand, we knew we needed more materials to truly hammer Ed Farm’s purpose to audiences. We then developed an array of supporting materials for the initiative, including a launch video, onsite Augmented Reality (AR) experience capabilities, a website, and headquarter’s environmental design specifics.

PR/Communications Strategy: Plan a brand launch press conference and subsequent immersive event for attendees and media — and create a sense of excitement by hosting Apple CEO Tim Cook as the guest speaker.

Big worked alongside Ed Farm and Apple’s Cupertino-based PR team to plan the launch event and media outreach. This event would begin with a press conference revealing Ed Farm’s name, brand and purpose — and would need to be unique and immersive for attendees and media like.

While Big helmed the development of all press materials (media alert, media kits, official launch release, press conference run-of-show, coordination with Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin’s office, coordination with partner Alabama Power, etc.), Apple worked to secure Tim Cook and national coverage from FOX News.

Big would be responsible for coordinating all onsite interviews with key Birmingham players only. Apple worked separately and pre-event to set up select VIP media interviews with Tim Cook onsite.

In leading up to the launch event, both Big’s creative and PR teams provided ongoing coordination of, as well as edits to, all creative and media relations elements of the Feb. 27 event. From visual tweaks to the launch video (last changes occurred the morning of the event!) to onsite calls, to media who were delayed in traffic, Big was front and center to ensure Ed Farm was launched in the most creative, effective and newsworthy means possible.

Big distributed the media alert for the event on Feb. 25. As the launch would be the reveal of both the Ed Farm name, brand, location and purpose, the alert was branded as TechAlabama but touted Tim Cook’s presence. To ensure the location was not revealed to a mass audience ahead of time, media were instructed in the alert to contact Big for non-public location details.

Big provided all local onsite media coordination, from greeting each media representative at the door with badges, escorting them to press risers, providing media kits, leading group tours of the Ed Farm experiential modules alongside Tim Cook, and coordinating onsite media interviews with Alabama, City of Birmingham and Ed Farm representatives.