McPherson Strategies works with Unschooled, a nonprofit organization and documentary film focused on empowering children to decide how and what they learn. The film was set to premiere at the 2020 SXSW EDU Festival in Austin, but moved to a virtual format as a result of COVID-19. Our team deployed a comprehensive campaign to drive audiences to the online event and educate them about the promise of unschooling, which included securing a feature story in Parents Magazine and bringing on an NPR correspondent to moderate the post-film discussion. In a matter of weeks, our social, media, paid search and influencer strategies drove 5,050 people to RSVP for the online screening and panel, helping Unschooled build a valuable community for ongoing engagement, triple its social followings and increase website pageviews by 5,000%. We also converted 80% of RSVPs into newsletter subscribers. The SXSW EDU team said the Unschooled event was by far their biggest turnout for anything they've ever done virtually.