Winner: Scholastic - Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life
In 2010, Scholastic Inc., the largest publisher and distributor of children's books and a leader in educational technology and children's media, launched its global literacy campaign, “Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life.” as it celebrated 90 years of serving children, parents and teachers. “The Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life.” website was created in conjunction with the campaign launch; it featured research to raise awareness about literacy and immediate takeaways such as tips, strategies, and book recommendations that encouraged adults to engage children in reading.
While the website was informative, practical, and clearly represented the campaign's goal, it lacked a specific call to action or a reason for people to return or share Scholastic’s message with others. Thus, a website redesign and relaunch plan was set into place for 2012, with the main goals of building community around the "Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life." mission and contemporizing the look, feel, and functionality of the website.
Scholastic developed a strategy to build community around the mission by more actively engaging and empowering educators and parents in their collective pursuit of helping children read. From the moment they visited the website, Scholastic would encourage people to take action by "joining the campaign," which would entail pledging their commitment to helping a child read. (Anyone who joins the campaign is called a "Literacy Champion.")
In order to support and connect people over a shared belief in the mission, Scholastic would highlight its literacy partners who promote reading on a national and local level, and facilitated a dialogue between them and members of the community. Scholastic would also offer easy ways for people to make an impact in their community.
With a compelling, far reaching, and relevant message, Scholastic’s social media and online presence were pervaded by the campaign and inspired various audiences to visit the website to learn more. In fact, Scholastic invited its list of over 100 literacy partners to share their success stories and created a series of "spotlight stories" to feature on the website.
Since Scholastic relaunched its “Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life.” website in 2012, it has garnered nearly 1 million page views, 635,000 visits and 535,000 unique visitors, with a monthly high of 95,000 page views, 80,000 visits and 75,000 unique visitors.
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