City of Hartford
Overview
The City of Hartford partnered with New Park Creative to address an urgent need: awareness and utilization of its 24 free and low-cost child care centers were down, even though seats were available. New Park Creative developed a direct-to-consumer brand and campaign inviting families to learn about, explore, and engage with Hartford’s early learning programs. The result was a multi-channel, multilingual campaign paired with a dynamic new website, designed to meet families where they were and help them find the right program for their needs.
Approach
Research
We began with extensive research into what families across Hartford and the greater Hartford area actually needed. This research surfaced a critical insight: hyper-local presence would matter as much as broad awareness, directly shaping the channel strategy, messaging, and visual direction that followed.
Multichannel Approach
Reaching Hartford families meant showing up where they already were, both broadly and block by block. The campaign combined city bus advertising and hyper-local billboards placed directly in the neighborhoods these families call home with streaming and social ads for wider reach, alongside an organic social media presence that kept the campaign present and personal in the day-to-day feeds of Hartford residents.
Visual Brand Development
We researched national names in child care alongside regional providers and out-of-market inspiration to shape a visual identity that felt warm, friendly, and inviting, while clearly conveying that these are accredited, high-quality institutions. The palette drew inspiration from Hartford’s own architecture and city buildings, reinforcing that these centers aren’t outside institutions, but are woven into the very communities and neighborhoods they serve.
Website
At the center of the campaign was a new website built to work the way families actually search for child care. The site was fully multilingual and built to accessibility standards, with a robust backend database allowing parents to search by location as well as the specific needs that mattered most to their family, including 24-hour care, special accommodations, and meal programs. Just as critically, we built the infrastructure for the city to begin accepting applications directly through the site, closing the gap between a family’s first inquiry and their child’s actual registration, a step that turned interest into enrollment far faster than before.
Impact
By combining hyper-local visibility with a website families could actually use to search and register, the campaign directly addressed the two barriers driving low utilization: awareness and access. Families who may never have known these programs existed, or assumed they weren’t the right fit, were reached in their own neighborhoods and given a way to find a program built around their specific needs. The addition of online registration meant that awareness could convert into enrollment without added delay, directly closing the gap between interest and actual seats filled. Just as importantly, the campaign helped reposition Hartford’s early learning programs in the eyes of the community, shifting perception from an underutilized city service to a trusted, high-quality resource that families actively sought out and shared with one another, strengthening the city’s ability to serve its youngest residents and sustain the funding these programs depend on.
