1) Celebrating 20 years:

Inner-City Arts: Brody PR was hired to raise the profile of Inner-City Arts as it prepared for its 20th anniversary and the opening of its expanded campus (designed by celebrated architect Michael Maltzan and garden designer Nancy Power). We modernized and reinvigorated the image and positioned the organization for national prominence. This included establishing an archive of alumni oral histories; revamping the newsletter to be more emotionally engaging; upgrading the website and creating a monthly e-newsletter; establishing relationships with the local, regional and national media, as well as media training the key spokespeople for the organization. We garnered major national publicity for the organization, including substantial media coverage of the architecture; doubled its newsletter subscriber list; significantly raised its profile in the downtown Los Angeles community and prepared the organization to secure appropriations money. In direct relation to the new outreach efforts, Inner-City Arts has continued to secure major foundation funding despite the recession, and increase its donor and volunteer base by one fourth. We recently announced the results of a major, multi-year UCLA / US Department of Education research study on the effects of an arts-based education on at-risk children, positioning Inner-City Arts as the go to place for research on arts and education.

2) A Crowning Moment for Inner-City Arts:

When Inner-City Arts learned that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge planned to visit the nonprofit arts organization on Skid Row in Los Angeles, they turned to their trusted public relations firm to manage media relations. With only three weeks notice, Brody PR turned what could have been a media circus into a well-orchestrated opportunity for Inner-City Arts to capture millions and millions of media impressions. From pre-event access, day-of-event coverage and post-event stories, Brody PR handled hundreds of media requests from around the world. The visit by Prince William and his bride Catherine Middleton to Inner-City Arts garnered approximately 1,380 broadcast hits, (CNN, The Today Show, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News), and more than 2,500 print and online hits (Los Angeles Times, People Magazine, New York Times, Associated Press). The broadcast hits in North America alone totaled $13 million in equivalent television advertising dollars, and website visits went from a few hundred daily to more than 110,000 immediately following the event.

1. Brody’s efforts included media training Inner-City Arts staff, teaching artists, and some of the students. She worked closely with the British Embassy to credential appropriate media, making a special effort to include reporters important to Inner-City Arts – those who cover social services and Skid Row. Brody live Tweeted during the event, created a special section on the Inner-City Arts website with a slide show and resulting media coverage, and prepared a feature for the Inner-City Arts newsletter. Media were granted access before and after the event to learn more about Inner-City Arts, and to view the art that was created by the children and the Royal Highnesses.
2. The Royals’ visit was a direct result of prior media coverage obtained by Brody PR -- a visit from cellist Yo-Yo Ma to Inner-City Arts, featured in the Los Angeles Times, was seen by the British Consulate who then came and toured the organization.

TreePeople: Brody PR was initially hired to handle the launch of TreePeople’s Center for Community Forestry, one of the most sustainable buildings in the country. In less than six weeks we planned a complex special community event that involved dozens of schoolchildren, major corporate partners and key influencers in the green building and sustainability universe. We garnered national and regional media coverage, including feature articles in the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Daily News, a segment on ABC World News Tonight and a feature in the Wall Street Journal.

Brody PR was subsequently retained for an additional two years to handle PR for the entire organization. While TreePeople has always been known for its work with trees, its initiatives in stormwater runoff and urban sustainability were less well-recognized. So we were charged with increasing TreePeople’s profile in these arenas. To that end we refocused all of TreePeople’s messaging and outreach efforts to reflect these areas of expertise including new features in its newsletter, planning and executing special events to showcase these core competencies, and generated substantial media coverage for stormwater runoff and urban sustainability projects, tree plantings and green building milestones.

Roplast Industries: Brody PR was hired by Roplast Industries to position it as the sustainable plastic bag manufacturer in the country. You might think this is a contradiction, but Roplast’s mission was to reinvent the plastic bag industry to be an environmentally responsible manufacturing trade.

In support of this, Brody PR was hired for two independent, yet linked, initiatives. The first was to promote the California Film Extruders and Converters Association’s (CFECA) first green manufacturing initiative, the Environmentally Preferred Rating (EPR) program (www.epraccredited.org). This is the plastic bag manufacturing industry’s inaugural sustainability program. Brody PR launched a full PR campaign that included message development, the creation of a website, and publicity in national trade media in order to position the industry as sustainable and increase participation in the program.

Secondarily, Brody PR generated national publicity for Roplast Industries’ sustainable line of plastic bags, including its biodegradable B4 bag and its reusable Bring Back Bag, both developed in anticipation of San Francisco’s plastic bag ban. We created a PR campaign around Roplast’s partnership with SaveMart, a large regional grocery store chain, and the environmental nonprofit Keep California Beautiful, which generated national exposure and multiple new business opportunities for Roplast. Still today Roplast is reaping the benefits of this campaign as companies all over the world pursue Roplast as a source of sustainable plastic bag products.

Le Lycée Français de Los Angeles hired Brody PR to help it with marketing – something the 47-year-old private school had never done before. The preshcool-12 grade school had always maintained a full enrollment as well as a significant wait list. But then came the opportunity to double enrollment with the opening of a new high school campus.

Brody PR initiated a comprehensive re-branding and marketing program. Although the school was well known to those familiar with the French education system, it now needed to extend its reach to a more mainstream audience. We not only had to communicate the school’s mission, but also change peoples’ perception about the school. To the general public, Le Lycée was viewed as “the French school,” operated and attended by Europeans. Le Lycée is actually a highly successful prep school, combining a classical European education in a truly international environment, with plenty of room for English-speaking students. This complex message required a multi-layered approach. We started by creating all new collateral materials with the new brand and message, including writing the school’s new tagline, We Teach the World. We established a monthly e-newsletter (The Lions’ Pride), alumni relations, outreach to private school consultants and feeder schools in the area, a scholarship program, and regular open houses for the public. We also generated publicity for the scholarship program, the new high school campus and the high school’s preparation for a highly regarded new academic exam, The French-American Baccalaureate.

Since instituting the marketing strategy, the Lycée has added more than 120 new families to its roster, and around 35 percent of the people who attend the school’s open houses apply to the school.

Vistamar School hired Brody PR to improve its media relations. A private college-prep academy that opened in 2005, Vistamar was founded by a group of parents in the South Bay. The independent high school had been trying on its own to get a story in the Los Angeles Times, but to no avail.

At Brody PR, we approach media relations with the long view in mind. We conducted a thorough background review of new independent schools in the area to put the school in context and develop relevant story ideas. We compiled statistics, sought out independent sources, determined the best angle and selected appropriate reporters. In several months, we began succeeding with pitches and have been garnering publicity for the school ever since. We achieved not one but two stories in the Los Angeles Times, the first one a feature in the Sunday edition. We also placed a student scholarship story on the world’s largest Spanish language newswire (EFE), resulting in media coverage that generated 20 inquiries from potential families within the first week it appeared.

The local papers have featured the school’s program in Mandarin language instruction, and local TV and radio news have featured multiple student stories. We’ve also helped the school publish a letter to the editor in the Los Angeles Times and place an opinion piece in Education Week, a national trade publication. In addition to and most likely as a result of the more sustained publicity over the past couple years, reporters now seek out Vistamar staff as sources on private school issues.