For the past three years, Spitfire has supported the Boston Opportunity Agenda (BOA) in advancing the adoption and implementation of a definition of “College, Career and Life Readiness (CCLR)” that reflects the knowledge, skills and experiences that are essential to student success after high school graduation. While the definition already received buy-in and collaboration from leaders around the city – from the mayor to superintendents – BOA needed to formalize its ownership of the campaign, bring in new partners and create an actionable campaign around the definition. It approached Spitfire to activate the definition on the ground by engaging the entire education ecosystem.
Spitfire brought together nonprofit leaders from Boston neighborhoods representing the broadest, most racially and ethnically diverse communities as possible. We facilitated discussions for nonprofit leaders to impact the definition itself and the eventual campaign. Our team designed student and parent focus groups in multiple languages and trained youth and community members to run these creative sessions. After analyzing our findings, we designed a full communications plan, including messaging and outreach phases, and solidified our pathway to success.
We partnered with Digsite – a qualitative and quantitative digital research platform – to test the draft messaging and campaign name with youth and their parents and caregivers through online focus groups. Pre-pandemic, youth said that they felt lonely and unsure of their way forward and wanted to be successful on their own terms. Their caregivers wanted them to have the tools to do so. We chose “Generation Success” as a campaign name to speak to these feelings and sharpened our messaging engagement plan accordingly.
