Case Study

Empowering Education: SCG’s Strategic Communication Success for New Brunswick Public Schools

How a Comprehensive PR Campaign Elevated the District’s Profile, Averted Crises, and Boosted Community Engagement

Challenge

Provide a steady flow of information to all district’s publics, thus significantly expanding awareness of and appreciation for the school district, with a focus on enhancing overall support. This effort includes consistent reputational management and support while navigating crises as they arise. Ultimately, our charge is helping the school district create and maintain an environment where students and staff can thrive.

Publics:

  • New Brunswick community at large
  • Media outlets
  • Students
  • Students’ families
  • Faculty and staff members
  • Key influencers: Educational leaders (county, state, national)
  • Key influencers: Elected officials (city, county, state)
  • Key influencers: Community organizers (city)
  • Middlesex County residents
  • New Jersey residents
  • Overall education community (state, national)

    • Geographic area:

  • City of New Brunswick (primary)
  • Middlesex County
  • New Jersey

    • Solution

    SCG initiated a comprehensive, strategic, ongoing communication campaign integrating earned, shared, and owned media. Employing its multi-channel communication method, the agency ensures that content it generates (including press releases, social media, video, speeches, statements, and more) for the district is shared across all relevant platforms, while also providing crisis communication counsel, internal communication support, event planning, and media training to select district leaders.

    Tactics:

  • Interviews between district leadership and key journalists
  • Information shared during open-to-the-public meetings
  • Media outreach, in the form of news releases, photos with captions, etc.
  • Information provided by statements, letter-style messages, and speeches
  • Student-focuses special events
  • White papers

    • Results

    Through consistent, often daily interaction with the superintendent and other senior leaders, SCG has helped the district navigate and, more importantly, avert crises, while establishing a good-will reservoir of support from students and families, community leaders, and other key publics. Overall, the PR program in support of New Brunswick Public Schools – which has been recognized with multiple state- and national-level public relations awards – has dramatically enhanced and elevated the client’s profile and reputation. Positive coverage has been generated in multiple leading media outlets, including – but not limited to – the TODAY Show, News12 New Jersey, NJ.com, MyCentralJersey.com, School Administrator, and WNBC-TV. In addition, the district’s social media program continues to expand its reach within the community, as highlighted during the past 12 months by Instagram organic engagement rising by 737%, X (formerly Twitter) engagement up 54%, and the number of Facebook fans increasing by 208%.

    737%

    Instagram organic engagement rised by