Thinking Fast: Achieving Clients’ Goals During a Pandemic

The Hatcher Group’s creative juices have been flowing even faster than usual over the past few months, as we prioritize helping our clients respond quickly to the COVID-19 crisis. We have made sure they haven’t missed a beat with planned activities—delivered in creative and innovative new ways. Here are some examples:

We worked with the Center for Mind-Body Medicine (CMBM) to launch a series of online workshops responding to the pandemic, beginning with “Reducing Stress and Restoring Hope.” Just days before non-essential businesses were ordered closed, our video team was on-site with CMBM’s founder and executive director, Dr. James S. Gordon, to record and edit an hourlong overview on the psychology and biology of trauma and stress. The piece imparts lessons that can help us all stay physically and psychologically healthy during this trying time.

We helped the National Assessment Governing Board seamlessly migrate the program for an in-person release of The Nation’s Report Card into a 90-minute, full HD streaming event. The release of the NAEP social studies report card featured U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the CEO of the National Constitution Center, and officials with the Governing Board and the National Center for Education Statistics. More than 1,400 people registered for the event, breaking previous records for in-person report card releases.

For the 100,000 Opportunities Initiative, we are leading earned media outreach and digital advertising for a virtual National Youth Hiring Day on May 7. The online job fair will connect unemployed young people with major employers in the healthcare, e-commerce, grocery, and delivery sectors that need to hire hundreds of thousands of employees to meet the demand for their services during the pandemic.

To help The Wallace Foundation respond to the COVID-19 crisis, we very quickly planned and executed a webinar for more than 1,000 attendees featuring a suite of Wallace-funded tools on financial management for nonprofits. Our sophisticated new platform made the event a breeze for presenters and our client, which received emails of thanks for sharing much-need resources and expertise.

For the April 28 special election in Maryland to fill the seat of U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings and the June 2 primary election, we worked with the OSI-Baltimore and the Baltimore Votes by Mail coalition to create a campaign to communicate to voters that voting by mail is the best option to protect the health of our community and to hold fair, inclusive elections. The campaign featured radio and TV ads with prominent politicians, including retired U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski reminding people to vote by mail. We’re also doing media outreach to raise awareness of the voting by mail campaign.

Along the way, we’ve enhanced our capabilities and forged new relationships. We are grateful to walk beside our clients in this unprecedented time and think of new strategies and tactics to accomplish their goals.

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