Aquinas College

With only nine days’ notice, the Sabo PR team sprang into action to plan and execute an event announcing Aquinas College’s first Latina president to the college and community, including media. We developed scripts, videos and a press release in both Spanish and English for a campus celebration that doubled as a press conference, was well attended and earned significant media coverage and social media engagement.

Drawing on our experience and the desire to celebrate the new president’s heritage, we drafted welcome messages for the college’s presidential search page in both English and Spanish. We also developed the event run of show and scripts for five speakers, social media posts and video scripts in English and Spanish.

For the scripts, we leveraged interviews with the college’s board chair, presidential search committee chair and new president to capture their voices and perspectives as well as the college’s voice, leaning into the tenets of Catholicism and the Dominican tradition. These materials then were used to create scripts for calls, emails and letters to key stakeholders.

Our team also coached the new president on the delivery of her prepared remarks as well as on media interviews at the press conference and in the days to come. She did a tremendous job with all of this – and received a very warm welcome from the campus and broader communities as well as the media.

Understanding and honoring the importance of confidentiality, we put together a plan that kept the new president’s identity a secret until the formal announcement. This kept rumors, misinformation and negativity away, allowing for a celebratory and drama-free press conference – and continued positivity in the media and online.

In total, we secured broadcast media coverage with an estimated viewership of more than 364,000, print and online media coverage with an estimated total of more than 2.9 millions views and a social media reach of more than 19,000, with incredibly positive engagement.