February is Black History Month

I wanted to give you a lot of lead time on a fairly large promotion that Ancestry.com will be involved in, beginning February 1. To celebrate Black History month, we are partnering with PBS, Coca-Cola, Proctor and Gamble and the Boys and Girls Club of America for a month-long campaign. The following will be going on:

1) PBS will air a show called "African American Lives" on Feb 1 and Feb 8 (with 4 years of syndication following) in which they will present 8 famous African Americans with their family tree and narrate one story in particular. We provided the research and support for the show's content.

2) Coca-cola is doing a sweepstakes during the month of February promoting the PBS show, Black History month, and family history. Through that sweepstakes, we will be giving away 3500 copies of FTM + World Deluxe Annual subs and 10 consultations with a professional genealogist. I believe Coke is giving away trips to your homeland, or something like that. Coke will brand PBS and Ancestry.com on the packaging, and the sweepstakes will be in 8 major markets across the country.

3) Proctor and Gamble is promoting the PBS show in Target stores on end-cap displays, using one of 8 brands... I can only remember 5: Pringles, Pampers, Downey, Charmin and Crest. They will be branding Coke, PBS and Ancestry.com during this February month-long promotion, nationwide.

4) PBS will be holding an educators training in each of the 8 major markets, giving teachers the resources and encouragement to teach their students about doing genealogy. Ancestry.com will have a presence at these trainings, and will be giving away 10,000 copies of "Creating Junior Genealogists" (http://shops.ancestry.com/product.asp?productid=3562&shopid=0).

5) PBS will be joining with Boys and Girls Club of America to encourage participation in family history during the month of February, and Ancestry.com will be providing each club/chapter with a free subscription and a portal designed specifically for the BGCA.

In addition to all these promotions we are joining with other companies to do, Ancestry.com will independently be doing the following to promote Black History in the month of February:

1) We are creating a Content Center (similar to the current ones, found here: http://www.ancestry.com/learn/contentcenters/contentCenter.aspx?page=census) which will reside in the current Learning Center. This center will aggregate all of our Black History content, and will be called "African American History Center".

2) There are 13 databases that are relevant to Black History, and Ancestry.com will be offering them for FREE during the full month of February, through the content center mentioned above. We will be making graphical and textual links available for affiliates, and using the content center as our landing page for the promotion (and probably post-promo for permanent links to African American content).

This would be a great time for affiliates to develop African American-centric content to take advantage of the attention and interest in family history caused by this promo. As we develop more ways to promote and publicize Black History Month, we will keep you updated.

Let us know if you have any ideas or requests that would be valuable to this campaign!