BeHeard Mile High

When the Center for African American Health launched BeHeard Mile High -- a unique effort to gather data from African Americans about the health-related issues, challenges and needs faced in the Denver area -- Progressive Promotions knew how to help them build the project’s brand, develop their message, design print and online collaterals and inform the public so they could recruit participants.

African Americans’ concerns have often gone unheard in community-level decision-making due to the lack of valid polling and a unified voice expressing their needs, priorities and ideas. Little data meant little clout and change hasn’t happened so far: Denver’s elected officials haven’t had the needed input to create the healthy and equitable communities we want and deserve. BeHeard Mile High was conceived via an advisory panel to solve this problem by getting participants to share their experiences and share the data so decision makers can take action.

Messaging

Working with the BeHeard staff and their network of community leaders, Progressive Promotions developed their key messages:

Value: Denver’s African American residents have the wisdom to create the healthy community we want.

Problem: We don’t have a unified voice to share our wisdom, so decision-makers aren’t connecting the dots to create the healthy community we deserve.

Solution: BeHeard MileHigh is launching an innovative project to collect that wisdom and unify our voices by giving every African American resident the opportunity to have a say on what’s important and how to build the healthy community we want and deserve.

Ask: Add your voice so you can BeHeard, too – it can be as easy as filling out a confidential, online micro-survey at BeHeardMileHigh.org.

OUTREACH MATERIALS

Next, our digital strategy and content team went to work designing a logo, a mobile-friendly website, flyers for local hang outs, postcards for organizers to handout, social media samples for the Center to announce the BeHeard project, and a video reflecting this identity and these messages. The Progressive Promotions team finished by crafting a style guide to ensure the BeHeard Mile High branding stays in sync through its future phases.

MEDIA RELATIONS

Lastly, we wrote and distributed a press release, crafted an op-ed and doggedly pitched and followed up with key reporters at large media outlets and with editors of newspapers and online sites reaching African American readers. Our efforts led to stories in stories in outlets like the Montbello Urban Spectrum (MUSE), the African American Voice, the Denver Weekly News (and in the future, 9News and KCFR’s Colorado Matters).

RESULTS

The most exciting part of Progressive Promotions' work on BeHeard Mile High to raise its profile, recruit participants and get their survey campaign off the ground and running is that after just two months, 900 survey participants signed up! We loved partnering with BeHeard Mile High and were so delighted when we received this message from Project Administrator Wivine Ngongo, MPH: “Thanks for being awesome!”