ISSUE

Looking for solutions to Philadelphia’s share of the national teacher shortage, PhiladelphiaWorks, the city’s workforce development board, contracted with Ceisler Media in 2024 on a six-month project to develop and execute a recruitment campaign to attract prospective educators for public and charter schools in the city. 

The recruitment effort was led by Elevate 215, whose work is focused on improving educational outcomes for Philadelphia students, and included thought partners at several city schools, as well as Ceisler Media’s strategic partners and PhiladelphiaWorks’ research consultants. 

Based on previously conducted research to identify target audiences, PhiladelphiaWorks and Elevate 215 were working on an accelerated timeline to stand up an outreach campaign ahead of peak educator recruitment season. 

Audience Targets: 

• Career changers 
• Current teachers 
• Soon-to-be and recent grads

STRATEGY

Ceisler Media began by developing and refining key messages for each audience segment, with a focus on demonstrating not just the value of a teaching career, but of a teaching career in Philadelphia. 

We refreshed existing brand assets with a logo update and color adjustments, and worked with the Elevate 215’s web developer to modernize key parts of the TeachPHL.org website. Our designer carried those elements through in other marketing collateral like social media graphics and fliers for job fairs. 

Ceisler Media’s team scripted and conducted teacher focus groups and video interviews to hear directly from Philadelphia educators about why they love working with Philly kids. Our partners at ColorSpace Labs created eight social-media friendly videos for use in a targeted advertising campaign. 

From there, Ceisler Media worked with MV Digital Group to marry the key messages and creative assets in a $75,000 outreach campaign. This campaign featured two components: 

• Display advertising targeted to audiences using IP addresses at Philadelphia-area universities with strong education programs 

• Meta advertising with tailored messaging and creative for the audiences outlined above

RESULT 

The 10-week campaign resulted in 2.7 million impressions and 44,495 link clicks. The takeaways were consistent with the expectations the Ceisler Media team set: videos out-performed images, and the messages delivered by and attributed to current teachers received the most engagement. 

Based on these outcomes and understanding that Elevate 215 intends to continue this work beyond their contract with Ceisler Media and PhiladelphiaWorks, our team provided strategic recommendations to support continued success and connected their team directly with MV Digital Group to carry out future advertising campaigns. 

CONCLUSION

Successful outreach campaigns don’t happen in a vacuum. For this project, feedback from current Philadelphia educators was essential at every step in order to understand the challenges and needs of the prospective educators this campaign aimed to reach. 

True engagement starts and ends with listening.