CREATIVE CAMPAIGN WITH DIGITAL-FIRST STRATEGY

Our brief from the British Council was to encourage a priority audience of 18 to 35-year-olds to want to learn about, protect and value Kenya’s cultural heritage in order to engage and benefit from it more fully.

With tight budgets and a young demographic, who were mostly to be found online, we developed a digital-first strategy which we called #CultureGrows.

To generate engagement, we posed the question ‘Who’s your Cultural Hero?’,  launched to coincide with World Day for Cultural Diversity, with an entertaining  explainer video developed for social media.

Cultural organisations and creative enterprises were invited to input to the  long list of heroes, with the nominees starring in a specially  commissioned photography exhibition held at one of Nairobi’s most iconic  cultural institutions, the McMillan Library. The nominees embraced the hashtag  and shared key messages on their social channels to communicate their place  on the list.

With the winners announced on Mashujaa Day (Heroes Day), we engaged media with a press conference attended by 25 choice journalists, and two media releases generating extensive local coverage.

This work was recognised by the PR industry’s most prestigious global awards, The Sabre Awards 2020, for superior achievement in branding and reputation in the educational and cultural institutions category. Gong subsequently won the pitch to manage communications for the British Council’s East Africa Arts programme across the region.

Stakeholders and consumers who have shown an  interest in cultural heritage will be able to continue the conversation online after the pilot phase, following a series  of digital training sessions we have delivered around cultural heritage.