Client
National Education Association
Topic
Read Across America
Project
To commemorate Dr. Seuss’s birthday, and to launch its nationwide Read Across America celebration, the National Education Association (NEA) hosted a star-studded kickoff event at the New York Public Library in Manhattan featuring actors Uma Thurman, Jake T. Austin, and the world’s most famous feline – the Cat in the Hat! To share the event with NEA’s 3 million members around the country, NEA turned to Lyons PR to produce a live webcast of their event, which could be viewed by their 20,000 followers on their dedicated Read Across America page on Facebook.
Strategy
The one-hour webcast captured all the sights and sounds of the event, from the interaction of the children in the audience with Thing 1 and Thing 2, to the impassioned reading of The Cat in the Hat by Uma Thurman. Response was monitored in real-time through the dedicated Twitter hashtag and the webcast Facebook comments. In just the first few minutes of the webcast, it was clear that NEA members across the country were tuned in and were thoroughly enjoying it. One teacher in New Jersey tweeted from her classroom, “My kids are watching it right now!!” and included a picture of her class watching the live webcast. She was joined by over thousands of unique viewers from around the country, more than NEA had anticipated.
Outcome
With the help of the webcast, the Read Across America kickoff event reached beyond the stacks of the New York Public Library, engaging NEA members nationwide from their homes, offices and classrooms. Further, it served to remind all viewers big and small “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”