Grey Horse

For Freedoms’ Eyes on Iran activation had Hillary Clinton, Jon Batiste, a dozen artists, lots of media commitments – and, one week out, no producer. The artists’ collective was planning to make a big statement in support of the Woman Life Freedom movement, but needed help with coordinating all the (many) moving parts.

Grey Horse stepped in to run all logistics and onsite production, from the macro (staging, AV) to the micro-but-essential (tent design for maximum vibes, bringing in the correct Persian pastries and tea). We worked closely with everyone from the Secret Service to the NYC Parks Department to ensure a safe and secure environment for our VIP guests and speakers, then got out of the way and let them make their impact.

The event went extremely well, with a smooth run-of-show and zero hiccups. Outsourcing their production let the organizers and artists put their focus where it made the biggest difference: supporting the women of Iran.

Melissa Mills, the first daughter of the woman known as Jane Roe, wanted to tell her story publicly for the first time. Following the publication of Joshua Prager’s The Family Roe, Melissa sought the opportunity to reaffirm her mother’s legacy in the context of a modern conservative movement that seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Grey Horse worked with Melissa to develop the story of her relationship with her mother into a narrative that would allow her to advocate for her pro-choice politics. Media training and careful management of press opportunities put Melissa in the best possible position to speak about a sensitive and personal topic.

With the overturning of Roe, Melissa was featured on CBS Mornings, MSNBC, multiple CNN shows, and in TIME Magazine, USA Today, and many others.

TED Countdown, the famous brand’s new climate initiative, needed to make a splash. They had to mobilize enthusiasm for their first big event (an invite-only summit in Edinburgh) since the start of the pandemic. They had to get eyeballs on the livestream to follow the summit. And they had to do this by convincing people who normally don’t care about climate change to… care about climate change.

Grey Horse tapped its extensive network of influencers to find a diverse group of people who could speak to audiences that typically don’t engage with climate issues. We created playbooks for them to create engaging content before, during, and after the summit (and tracked the analytics of what they made). We also took over daily copywriting duties for TED’s Twitter and Instagram accounts, giving them a fresh new voice. And, as the coup de grace, we designed a paid social promotion to boost their audiences across key platforms—and drive attention to the all-important livestream.

Grey Horse influencers helped spike digital engagement around the summit’s themes, leading to thousands of likes, comments, and shares. TED’s organic growth rates also showed significant improvement under Grey Horse’s watch, with 3x Twitter impressions and 8x follower growth at the height of the campaign. Then came the final paid social sprint. Thanks to Grey Horse’s strategy and implementation, TED added over 5,600 new newsletter subscribers, nearly 4,000 new Instagram followers, and drove tens of thousands of viewers to its livestream.

With Britney Spears’ final conservatorship court date on the horizon, #FreeBritney activists were at a crossroads – what would their movement look like, and would it even continue to exist, once Britney was free?

Grey Horse consulted with Free Britney and other figures in the anti-conservatorship movement to design the Free Britney Symposium, a private event targeted to lawmakers, the legal community, and select media attendees. The event aimed to make a statement that the #FreeBritney activists would continue working against conservatorships for all victims, not just Britney. We produced the event, managed security, coordinated well-known speakers, and ran the run of show and technology. We also handled media pitching and press on behalf of the organizers.

The event was a success, both from event management and press coverage perspectives. It inspired ongoing coverage in outlets including Sky News, and made a big enough splash to get Britney herself involved. This engagement led to ongoing consulting with the movement for creative services, production, and much more.

Fossil Free Media and its Clean Creatives program needed a production partner to help organize the first F-List Awards, a virtual awards program honoring the “best” (read: the worst) in greenwashing for major brands and agencies.

Grey Horse worked closely with the campaign and their partners to coordinate talent, tech, digital assets, messaging, and public relations for the show. We also conceived and created their “For Your Consideration” social ad campaign, mocking the usual awards-season ad submissions, and created the social packaging for all of the talent to promote the show.

All of the pre-tapings were completed within our timeline, and the event met client goals for viewership and engagement, with re-broadcasts and future social campaigns planned. The event also got ample attention in the trades, including AdWeek’s “Ad of the Day,” and, most exciting, Clean Creatives’ first attack op-ed in Ad Age. The campaign won two Shorty Impact Awards as well as an Audience Honor!

In her first book, award-winning writer and activist Soraya Chemaly encouraged women across the world to harness their anger into positive personal and societal change. Grey Horse supported her messaging by coordinating a successful book launch party at Corkbuzz and creating a detailed social media strategy, as well as a full suite of Rage Becomes Her-branded graphics and audiograms.

The outreach campaign, led by Grey Horse, earned Chemaly fifteen notable publication mentions and/or features in Refinery29, ELLE, and The Washington Post, among others. The book quickly rose to the top of the Amazon charts and helped propel Chemaly’s career. In 2019, Grey Horse prepared Chemaly for her first TEDWomen talk which reached over 2.1 million views online.

Legal historian and Johns Hopkins Professor Martha S. Jones sought the help of Grey Horse in promoting Vanguard, a groundbreaking history of Black women’s pursuit of political power in the United States, from the earliest days of the republic to modern times. In conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment and ahead of one of the most critical elections in U.S. history, Martha wanted to ensure that Black women voters, suffragists, and activists would be heard and celebrated.

Grey Horse developed a comprehensive media strategy including a featured appearance on WNYC’s’ The Brian Lehrer Show during Lehrer’s coverage of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, promotion of Vanguard in NPR’s 2020 Special Report on Voting in America, an interview with Preet Bharara on the Stay Tuned with Preet podcast, and more.

Our events team booked and managed several launch events for Martha, including a special Vanguard cocktail party with VIP guests such as Carol Anderson and Eric Foner and public events at Books are Magic, City Lit, and an “Ask Me Anything” session via Reddit’s AskHistorians forum. Vanguard received glowing praise in The New York Times, was featured on C-SPAN’s Book TV, and was lauded by Hillary Clinton, The 1619 Project’s Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Rosario Dawson among many others.

Recognizing the need to progress in the digital era, this 120-year-old magazine needed new practices in order to expand their readership and attract a younger audience. Grey Horse led a series of workshops and trained staff in engagement techniques and social media tools. We provided strategic guidance on the development of a series of podcasts, videos, and digital communities that allowed MIT Technology Review to reach their intended audiences. As a result of these efforts, the magazine achieved a 3x increase in Twitter engagement rates. MIT Technology Review was also named one of the best scientific content creators by Synthego.

When the magazine hosted their first CES event, they worked with Grey Horse to create a unique, memorable experience for c-suite guests unfamiliar with the brand. Providing an escape from the standard technology-packed CES events, Grey Horse helped MIT Technology Review host a memorable, intimate dinner at a secret location in the desert: Calico Basin, Red Rock Canyon. Fifty hand-curated guests joined the impactful, memorable event and welcomed the only CES event without WiFi.

In 2018, the United Nations lacked consistent messaging on its social media channels. In order to create a streamlined way to standardize its social media posting practices across one hundred channels in eight different languages, Grey Horse led a series of in-house workshops for over twenty United Nations social media specialists. With Grey Horse’s direction, the United Nations developed formalized guidelines and detailed best practices for their respective platforms. Workshop participants reported dramatic boosts in confidence dealing with daily routines, high-pressure situations, and social media messaging. The United Nations now has profiles on all major social media platforms and more than 50 accounts.

One of America’s leading legal firms had a delicate situation: a prominent client was filing a lawsuit against her employer, placing her in the center of a highly contentious public conversation. Grey Horse provided digital security to safeguard the client’s data, and trained her in crisis messaging on social media. We developed an engagement strategy that minimized her legal exposure while allowing her to speak out with confidence against injustice.