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Case Study 9

Marketing Challenges for Online Events

By Katherine Allen

The CIVIC team had many success stories during COVID when programming pivoted to online. To build skills in conducting online discussions, nine agents attended a healthcare discussion using the Common Ground for Action (CGA) Online Forum, which is not only online, but also is strictly a type-in-the-chat-based platform to deliberate. After this experience, five more agents and staff from UF and Florida A&M University (FAMU) attended a training to become CGA moderators.

One of the agents who was trained is a Family and Consumer Sciences Agent (FCS) and has worked for the University of Florida/ IFAS Extension for 28 years and lives and works in Live Oak, Florida. Live Oak is situated in Suwannee County in north-central Florida, positioned to the west of I-75 and south of I-10. Live Oak is a rural, agricultural community of about 44,000 people. The community does not see a lot of civic engagement in city, school board, or county meetings. The county has seen challenges to its economic

development due in part to its rural nature and distance from metropolitan areas. The agent’s goal was to target community members 18 and older to participate in an anonymous platform to start getting attendees comfortable with sharing opinions about various issues. Her intent was to start with the solely-chat based platform, then move to Zoom or TEAMS where attendees could see and hear one another and eventually move to in-person discussions. Repetition strengthens skills, so if more people could experience dialogue to understand a variety of perspectives, the agent felt there would be more engagement with local decision-makers as a result.

The first scheduled program on healthcare was after an issues gathering exercise where leaders in the community shared what they felt were issues or concerns in their community. The agent left it open for each leader to answer from the viewpoint of their job or their own neighborhood. She directly called the leaders and was met with generous participation.

Since the Suwannee County community had recently lost their hospital and the online forum was during COVID, the agent did not expect zero registrations. So, after the first failed attempt (with no registrations), she invited the Suwannee River Regional library in Live Oak to become a partner. The library had a following with their Lunch and Learn series and used their email list to advertise their monthly offerings. Three classes were scheduled on topics of: healthcare, energy, and the future of work.

In addition to traditional advertising for the co-sponsored dialogues, the agent sent a personal email to other Family and Consumer Sciences agents in the Northeast District asking them to participate or at least share with their clientele (and provided the FCS Agents with a link to the NIFI guide). Suwannee County Master Gardener volunteers were sent an email invitation and link. Facebook pages for Extension and the library were utilized, as was the Extension newsletter. The agent discussed the offering with staff in case they got calls or questions in the office. The forums were described as community chats or community conversations in order to sound casual and less foreboding. Would they get more traction from using different words to describe the event? There were zero registrations for both Health Care and Energy Community Chats.

For the final community conversation scheduled in August, a personal email invite went out to more than 200 community members including Branford Town Council, the Suwannee County Board of County Commissioners, the Live Oak City Council, and the Live Oak Community Redevelopment Agency. It was also sent out through the Suwannee County Chamber of Commerce’s blast email. In this advertisement, there was a link for the issue guide so people could look at it prior to signing up.

When still no participants signed up and the deadline for registration was looming, marketing professionals at University of Florida and members of the Suwannee County. FCS advisory committee were asked to brainstorm how to improve participation. This activity resulted in ideas such as providing incentives, holding conversations in-person, presenting to professionals (e.g., the Health Department or Suwannee Valley Electric Cooperative), and then encouraging those organizations to facilitate to their groups. Figuring out how to incorporate the benefits to participants was also discussed. Finally, the advisory committee was given information on how to participate. Still no luck—zero registrations.

Conclusion

We are not sure if the virtual platform turned people away, or if it was lack of broadband access, lack of interest in the topics, incorrect marketing, or the agent’s remote working environment that caused collaboration networks to become less interconnected and more siloed. Remote work caused the agent to spend more time using asynchronous forms of communication, such as email and message platforms, and less time having conversations in person, by phone, or by video conference. From a marketing standpoint, more attention to providing potential attendees with benefits from attending are needed.

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