The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. We create friendly knowledge and understanding between the people of the UK and other countries. We do this by making a positive contribution to the UK and the countries we work with – changing lives by creating opportunities, building connections and engendering trust..
We help young people to gain the skills, confidence and connections they are looking for to realise their potential and to participate in strong and inclusive communities. We support them to learn English, to get a high-quality education and to gain internationally recognised qualifications. Our work in arts and culture stimulates creative expression and exchange and nurtures creative enterprise.
We have been working in Ethiopia since 1943. Every year we connect with thousands of students, educators, policymakers, academics, creatives and entrepreneurs in Ethiopia. The focus of our work is on providing opportunities for young people through:
- supporting young people to achieve the education, qualifications and skills needed to reach their potential in their future careers
- creating and developing new networks and platforms to give young people a voice in society.
The British Council has been here for 8 decades and has reached hundreds of millions of Ethiopians. But the demographics has drastically changed in the past decade or so and the new generation that we aspire to reach don’t know who we are or they just have a very partial version of the whole that the British Council is.
Note that the British Council in Ethiopia has
- A Facebook page with 240 thousand followers and A Twitter page and an Instagram page with more than 4 thousand followers (combined)
- A website that receives more than 30 thousand hits per month
- A total face to face reach in the hundreds of thousands and sometimes in the millions per year
- A reach of more than 100 organisations per year
- A media reach of 20 million in the year 2019 alone
- More than 4 thousand Exam takers and 1-2 thousand Teaching Center students.
But, most of our reach has been limited to the new media rather than traditional media and we want to expand that by creating an integrated communications/marketing that effectively engages with our target audiences. We also want our audiences to have a proper understanding of the work that we do rather than have a very partial view or just no awareness. Last but not least, we want to increase the number of exam takers and teaching centre students through the media drive.
Therefore, in this regard, the British Council is seeking the services of a PR agency that will develop marketing concepts and deploy PR stints for the British Council (overall and also for specific programmes)
Each campaign will work towards one or more of the following objectives:
- Increased awareness for the British Council and its offerings by the target audiences including young people (future leaders, those who seek professional and academic excellences, those who work in creative sector and etc), potential partners such as business organisations (local and multinationals), Government Bodies, CSOs and etc by utilising traditional media.
- Increase the level of target audience engagement across the existing online platforms for each of the programmes– social media, online advertising, website visits.
- Increase positive brand sentiment for the British Council across portfolios and programmes through positive and relatable brand associations.
- Increase the uptake of our Teaching Centre and Exams products