CASE STUDY

The Big Hair Assembly

How PLMR used its digital marketing and PR expertise to make this global event a success

Client

Sector

Education

Charities

Services provided

Public Relations

Social Media Management

Digital Marketing

The Situation

Charity ‘World Afro Day’ exists to challenge hair discrimination wherever it is found across the world and particularly in the UK. Each year, the organisation hosts the Big Hair Assembly, which is an educational event bringing students together in a celebration of Afro hair, identity and equality. It is aimed at children and young people of all backgrounds, to create sustainable generational change while encouraging empathy and unity.
Wanting to build on the momentum of previous years, World Afro Day sought out PLMR to help drive sign-ups and increase participation in the Big Hair Assembly, which takes place on 15th September each year.
With only a few weeks to increase awareness and registrations for the event, and with summer holidays well underway, there was a sense of urgency to ensuring engagement with teachers and school leaders to participate was achieved.

What we did

With timeliness front of mind, PLMR’s specialist education consultants worked closely alongside our award-winning digital team to develop an impactful and targeted social media campaign across Facebook and Twitter (now X). These platforms were chosen due to their targeting capabilities but also because we knew teachers would be likely to continue accessing their personal social media profiles while on holidays.
Delivering this support, our teams drafted copy for the advertisements, adopting messaging that would resonate with teachers and those working in schools and importantly, had a clear call-to-action.
We also worked with World Afro Day to identify the best imagery to support these digital marketing campaigns and provided ongoing strategic support regarding the targeting parameters of the advertisements – ensuring harder-to-reach communities were also engaged.
Working hand-in-hand with World Afro Day, this digital marketing was complemented by its ongoing organic social media content.
Helping raise awareness of the Big Hair Assembly and the issues it seeks to address more broadly, our team also worked closely with the client to agree relevant themes and practical advice through which its founders could start to develop a media presence and expand its reach.

The Result

As a result of working collaboratively to develop and deliver our first paid and organic social media campaigns, an additional 11,500 schools signed up for the Big Hair Assembly in the first week of our support.
Building on this success the following year, our digital team achieved more than 100,000 impressions in two weeks.
Our contacts across education and social affairs media also ensured our PR engagement was a success, securing opportunities with Teachwire and QA Education which offered practical tips to teachers and school leaders who want to make their classrooms a more open and welcoming space for all, as well as an interview with ITV News on how businesses should also fight hair discrimination in the workplace.

Adopting an integrated campaigning approach which leveraged digital and traditional PR tactics meant our support for the Big Hair Assembly was as meaningful as possible. The event was a huge success, making a significant impact on the thousands of children and schools involved, and as a result of the charity’s ongoing efforts to continue this momentum, the founder and CEO of World Afro Day was invited to join a government task force on the issue.

The Big Hair Assembly

The Situation

What we did

The Result

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