Digital Bridges Open House

This video is proof that our group was able to pull through a successful campaign, even though we had a rocky start!

Our PR assignment for this semester was to create a campaign for a new community technology center, Digital Bridges. My class was divided into four groups that each had a different target market for the program. Back in January my group was assigned the Access Milledgeville target market. This was a special program that focused on giving out special internet accounts for those who could not afford the internet. This seemed like a wonderful, exciting and challenging campaign because we would get the opportunity to help those in need. However our campaign slowly began to unravel as the name of the program changed, and the accounts would not be available in time for our group to market with a campaign.

After spending 3 months trying to stop our campaign from falling apart, Digital Bridges made the decision to assign us a different campaign for them. Our plan b was to plan a blue ribbon cutting ceremony for the official opening of Digital Bridges. With only three weeks out until the attentive date, the next problem came from the trouble with confirming and coordinating everything with 5 different organizations. This campaign ended up falling through because we did not have enough time to invite the right people to the ceremony and the paint on the outside of the building would not be done in time for the event.

So our group moved on to plan c. This time we created a campaign for that would bring awareness about Digital Bridges to the community. We planned, organized and executed an open house for Digital Bridges. This was a challenge because after all of our set backs with this semester we only had two weeks to plan it! The event was a display of everything that Digital Bridges has to offer to the community. Since we had a broad audience to target we used a combination of traditional, and social media as well as promotional incentives that included a Twitter contest, free food, and a free jump drive give-away to the first 100 people that filled out an entrance survey. We also had Z97 do a live remote at the event.

Our goal for this new event was to get a 100 people through the door. We met our and more with the final head count being 383! This event also generated business interest between Digital Bridges and local schools, businesses and restaurants. The traffic on Digital Bridges Facebook and Twitter page also increased due to the increased awareness.

Although our campaign started off to a rocky start with all the changes, it definitely ended with a successful, and memorable campaign!