Holocaust Educational Trust
Holocaust Memorial Day
The Challenge
In July 2021 the Government announced that it had approved plans for a national Holocaust memorial and learning centre to be built next to Parliament. The Holocaust Educational Trust welcomed the news, and wanted to ensure its commentary and reaction was included in news articles that covered the announcement.
We needed to undertake targeted, timely media relations to ensure that media chose to include HET’s commentary ahead of other Jewish bodies and organisations that were also reacting with the news. Acting swiftly was key.
The Solution
A pre-approved statement from HET’s Chief Exec Karen Pollock was created so we were able to issue it as soon as the news was confirmed. We also provided additional comment from HET Ambassador Sir Ben Helfgott – a Holocaust survivor and former British Olympian, knowing that his words would be particularly resonant as the Tokyo Olympics was taking place at the time. We shared a joint comment from Lord Austin and Bob Blackman MP, Co-Chairs of the APPG on Holocaust Memorial to give media a full package of commentary for any pieces.
We immediately issued the story to all the journalists we knew would be most likely to be covering the news, and established quickly who was covering the story at all key titles, to ensure they got it as soon as possible.
We also issued op-ed pieces from Karen and Sir Ben, so we had more in-depth commentary on the matter that we were able to offer to key media as exclusive content.
