Colorado Shines is the state’s quality rating and improvement system used to assess, improve and communicate the level of quality in early childhood care and education programs.
As part of our long-standing focus on early childhood education, SE2 worked with the Colorado Department of Human Services to increase awareness of Colorado Shines among early learning and child care providers, parents and primary caregivers, and other stakeholders.

After a discovery process that included statewide surveys of more than 1,000 parents and providers, SE2 developed a complete communications framework for each key audience targeted by Colorado Shines.
Based on discovery findings, SE2 crafted key messages for each audience in English and Spanish; developed a comprehensive communications plan focused on digital, grassroots, social media, earned media and paid media tactics; designed a new mobile-optimized website in English and Spanish; and developed a suite of materials to support outreach to parents, early learning programs and providers.
The outreach produced strong results, with 55,000 unique visitors to ColoradoShines.com who used the site to conduct more than 145,000 searches for providers. The paid media campaign took a relatively modest budget and leveraged $138,000 in added value plus effective targeting to deliver more than 10 million TV, radio and digital impressions.
Media outreach resulted in extensive coverage on Hispanic and non-Hispanic outlets with a collective audience of more than 3 million people. Social media promotions increased Facebook visits by 35 percent.