Sacramento Seeking Marketing Agency

City of West Sacramento is seeking a marketing agency for Kid’s Home Run.

Purpose:

This effort is aimed at students, influencers, families of small children, and business / labor/ industry leaders. The current target audiences for the City of West Sacramento Kids’ Home Run branding and marketing are as follows:

Primary Target Audiences:

• Families of young children aged 0 – 3 years old: This will be the primary audience for the Universal Preschool for West Sacramento program of the Kids’ Home Run, as well as the College Savings account program of the Kids’ Home Run.
• Teens and young adults aged 12 – 18 years old: Including incoming high school freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. This will be the primary audience for the demand side of the work-ready internships and digital badges component of the Kids’ Home Run as well as the primary audience for the college promise program.
• Business / labor / industry leaders, including employers, chambers of commerce, workforce development boards, economic development agencies, labor unions, career centers and industry advocacy groups. This will be the primary audience for the supply side of the work-ready internships and the digital badges component of the Kids’ Home Run.
• Secondary Target Audiences:
• Influencers / Stakeholders: Including parents, caregivers, high school and community college counselors, community leaders and regional elected officials. This will be a secondary audience for all programs of the Kids’ Home Run.
• Philanthropic community: Including regional foundations, large philanthropic grant making organizations, small community foundations, sports and private sector foundations and education related philanthropic organizations. This will be a secondary audience for all programs of the Kids’ Home Run.

Background:

West Sacramento is a thriving riverfront City encompassing approximately 22 square miles, with a population of approximately 54,000. In 2014, the United States Conference of Mayors named West Sacramento the Most Livable City in America among those with fewer than 100,000 residents for its Universal Preschool for West Sacramento (UP4WS) program.

West Sacramento is one of the largest employment bases in the six county Sacramento region, but also has one of the highest unemployment rates (7.1% in 2015). Since its incorporation in 1987, West Sacramento has been a regional leader for infill housing and economic development, effective governance, infrastructure creation and urban farming. Once a blue collar city across the river from Sacramento, West Sacramento has evolved over the past 28 years into a hub of research and development, advanced manufacturing, food processing, and logistics. The city’s workforce development activities however, have yet to mature with the changing economic landscape.

On November 8, 2016, West Sacramento voters approved Measure E which added a quarter- percent to the City’s portion of the local Transactions Tax (sales tax) rate. Measure E is a general tax and revenues received from it may be expended on any lawful purpose. The measure, by its own terms, provides advisory language regarding potential areas of focused investment, including improving educational and career opportunities for youth.

On November 16, 2016, after Measure E was passed, the Council adopted funding targets for all areas of focused investment for Measure E, as well as adopted a framework for the “improving educational and career opportunities for youth” component of Measure E investment, dubbed the Kids’ Home Run program.

The Kids’ Home Run is organized temporally, so that one can envision the journey of a West Sacramento youth, starting at age four and continuing on through age 18, when they enter college and / or begin an entry level career with a local employer. The Kids’ Home Run begins with a youth’s enrollment in one of the Universal Preschools for West Sacramento’s (UP4WS) to receive a high-quality preschool education. Once a youth has graduated from a UP4WS preschool, they will then have access to a guaranteed college savings account when entering kindergarten within the Washington Unified School District, with the goal of a match for a family deposit. High School aged youth within the Washington Unified School District, through the Kids’ Home Run program, will have access to paid internships in a relevant industry sector or job-type if they are enrolled in an integrated college and career pathway and making satisfactory progress in school. Finally, through the Kids’ Home Run program, every West Sacramento student graduating from High School and directly enrolling full-time in a program of study at the Sacramento City College Campus will enroll fee free, and have access to a scholarship of up to $1,000. A system of digital badges, virtual credentials that can unlock opportunities for young people will be used to track young people’s progress and motivate them to work their way through the Kids’ Home Run program.

The initiative is slated to begin to be implemented in 2017 for all youth, but it was designed so that someday in the future, a West Sacramento young person would be enrolled in every program at some point in their life. The objective of the Kids’ Home Run initiative is to change the culture of the City into one where every young person is prepared for college and career while creating a more robust workforce for local employers and enhancing the City’s economic development capacity and competitiveness. Specifically, the goal of this Proposal is to define the brand of the Kids’ Home Run and raise awareness among current and prospective members of our target audience. Our primary target audience includes: prospective parents of preschool and kindergarten aged youth, prospective career pathway students (incoming 9th graders), prospective internship applicants (incoming and outgoing seniors), and prospective community college students (outgoing seniors). The brand and marketing outreach materials should educate stakeholders about the variety of educational and career opportunities the Kids’ Home Run Provides. The branding and marketing materials should also address changing perceptions of what career pathway and career training programs can offer in terms of good-paying, fulfilling and sustained employment opportunities, while increasing employer engagement in these programs. Additionally, the branding and marketing materials should motivate and increase enrollment in community college. The branding and marketing outreach materials should be crafted to reach the most opportunistic target audiences in areas and at times in which potential program participants will be the most receptive to receiving messages.

To develop a comprehensive plan to brand and market the West Sacramento Kids’ Home Run, the City of West Sacramento is seeking a multi-disciplinary, full service professional agency (or group of agencies) that provides a wide range of services including, but not limited to, project management, website design and development, website usability testing, social media management and adverting buys, baseline awareness surveys, focus group testing, collateral material development, community and faith-based outreach, creation of brand identities, pitch deck creation, creation of style guides and the ability to develop an audience communications or positioning strategy.

Scope of work:

The purpose of this RFP is to solicit Proposals from qualified vendors with sufficient resources, experience and abilities to develop the branding and marketing strategy for the Kids’ Home Run. The following is a general description of the scope of services intended to serve as a guide to illustrate minimum project requirements. Consultants are encouraged to develop their own unique path to producing a comprehensive branding and marketing strategy for the Kids’ Home Run, but it must include the deliverables below.

• Brand Development and Brand Guidelines: Establish a comprehensive and compelling “umbrella” brand position for the City of West Sacramento’s Kids’ Home Run initiative that encompasses all programs that make up the initiative.
  • Formulate a brand development strategy and approach for the creation of a brand identity, for the Kids’ Home Run, designing primary and secondary lockups, primary and secondary symbols, primary and secondary wordmarks as well as a tagline. Include color palate guidelines for the lockups, symbols and wordmarks as well as the typeface and typography guidelines.
  • Develop a style guide that demonstrates how all visual content should be designed as well as a content guide that controls how the copy and text within designs should be developed in the future.
  • The brand must increase awareness and understanding of the Kids’ Home Run program’s capacity to increase college and career readiness for West Sacramento youth, provide access to opportunity to all West Sacramento families and address the needs of all students including West Sacramento’s most   vulnerable   populations.   Additionally,   the   brand   must   change the  perceptions of what career technical education and career pathways mean, as well as motivate students to apply to community college, paid internships, enroll in a career technical education program while increasing employer engagement with these programs.

• Audience Communications / positioning strategy: Strategic communications and positioning strategy must be designed to increase the number of youth who: Enroll in West Sacramento’s Universal Preschool for West Sacramento program, sign up for the Kids’ Home Run College Savings Account, create an account with the LRNG digital badging platform, enroll in a career technical education pathway, sign up for launchpath.com’s internship matching service, apply for an internship through launchpath.com, and enroll in community college.
• Strategic communications and positioning strategy must also be developed to increase the number of philanthropic donors to individual Kids’ Home Run programs and the initiative as a whole, in addition to increasing the number of employers who offer career ready internships and digital badges.
• Develop a set of strategies and strategic messaging guides for traditional and social media for the Kids’ Home Run program that effectively speak to target audiences in order to meet goals and objectives. Identify effective communications channels, techniques and tools to meet goals and objectives.
• Map accessible communications resources including free air time or pro bono work by communications experts.
• Create a communications strategy master plan that lays out the strategic positioning and communications strategy outlined above.
• Pitch Deck for philanthropic donors: Create a pitch deck of 10 -20 slides for a philanthropic audience that conveys: the background on the creation of the Kids’ Home Run, brief overview of the City of West Sacramento, what the objectives of the Kids’ Home Run are, why a donor should care about the Kids’ Home Run, the individual programs in the Kids’ Home Run, how data informs and drives the Kids’ Home Run and how additional funding will impact the future success of individual programs and the Kids’ Home Run initiative as a whole.
• Design marketing and informational collateral outreach material: Design, and do not print, the following outreach materials:
• Google Adwords campaign for Kids’ Home Run
• Facebook ad campaign for Kids’ Home Run
• Utility bill insert ad campaign for Kids’ Home Run
• Three fold brochure on Universal Preschool for West Sacramento (UP4WS) designed for families in order to increase the number of three to five years olds who are enrolled in the program
• Kids’ Home Run College Savings Accounts three fold brochure designed to increase the number of parents that apply for college savings accounts
• Three fold brochure on digital badging designed to increase the number of students that create login’s on LRNG
• Three fold brochure on Launchpath.com designed to increase the number of students that create accounts on launchpath.com and apply for internships
• Three fold brochure on career pathways designed to increase the number of students that enroll in career technical education pathways and
• Three fold brochure designed to increase the number of eligible students that apply for the West Sacramento College Promise program.
• Creation of a website, updates and maintenance: Create a website for the Kids’ Home Run initiative and its programs. Provide maintenance and updates for at least two years after website creation. Please see http://www.oaklandpromise.org/ for a website of comparable features and functionality that the City of West Sacramento is looking to replicate for the Kids’ Home Run. The Oakland Promise is a similar cradle to career initiative with similar programs to the Kids’ Home Run.

Due dates: May 19, 2017

City of West Sacramento
City Manager’s Office
1110 West Capitol Avenue, Third Floor
West Sacramento, CA 95691

PR firms who may be a fit for this assignment include APCO Worldwide and Burson Marsteller.