Obama's media team, composed of five young women, has fostered these kinds of media relationships, working behind the scenes to build the first lady's image with carefully crafted appearances, silly comedic skits and stage-managed events that target the audiences Obama wants to reach with her advocacy work promoting healthy eating and exercise, supporting military families and encouraging young people to pursue higher education.
The goal has been to "keep breaking through", said Caroline Adler Morales, her communications director. Now the first lady and her team are racing against the clock for a final push of "the Obama brand", as the former White House social secretary Desire Rogers called it.
Like Jacqueline Kennedy, who artfully promoted the "Camelot" image that came to characterise her husband's presidency, Obama has been instrumental in shaping her family's public profile. Since the summer, her East Wing team has overseen the premiere of a CNN documentary advocating for girls' education starring the first lady, orchestrated her third cover shoot for Vogue magazine, held a roundtable with mom bloggers from PopSugar and hosted a tea with cooking star Ina Garten during the final harvest of her White House garden.
The pace has continued as she heads for the exit, and Obama's long farewell tour has taken on new urgency following the election of Donald Trump. Her final White House interview with Oprah Winfrey will air on Tuesday in the US. In an excerpt released by CBS News, Winfrey asked whether she believes the Obama administration was able to achieve the "hope" it promoted.
"Yes, I do," Obama said, "because we feel the difference now. See, now we're feeling what not having hope feels like."
Three days before the Children's Hospital event, the first lady brought Disney Channel stars including Cameron Boyce of the sitcom Jessie and Madison Hu of Bizaardvark to help her sort toys donated for needy kids. While the young actors were in town, they taped a public service announcement with Obama that will air this month on ABC, the Disney Channel and Disney XD.
It was co-ordinated by Morales and the other members of the media team, who have taken on a central role in all of Obama's activities.
The tightknit group sharing space in the East Wing includes Morales' deputy, Joanna Rosholm, formerly a regional press staffer for the president; Tiffany Drake, a presidential management fellow who started her career as a Hollywood publicist; Lauren Vrazilek, who publicises Obama's education and military programmes; and Kelsey Donohue, who oversees digital media.
They say the first lady often challenges them to "go bigger" when it comes to their communications efforts. And the motivation for the push is clear - public surveys suggest that first ladies "can influence the way people perceive the president, the president's policy agenda and presidential candidates", said political scientist Lauren Wright.
Their office, overlooking Kennedy's garden, is decorated with poster-size images of Obama on magazine covers, vintage post cards of the White House and old copies of Life magazine with Eleanor Roosevelt on the cover.
A big calendar marked by blue, pink, yellow and green highlighting tracks the magazine covers that will soon publish, the upcoming television interviews, events with celebrity friends, the first lady's coming appearances - and the messages each are geared to send.
The first lady has been a coveted talk-show guest for eight years, said Stephanie Cutter, a former Obama White House adviser. "Once she gave her convention speech in 2008, she took on an iconic status," Cutter said. "Requests started to pour in, and once she became the first lady, she was very smart in the way that she scheduled her appearances and what appearances she did."
After her husband's first term in the White House, Obama stopped doing sit-down interviews with traditional news-oriented journalists who cover her.
She and her team decided that her time was best spent with media personalities that reached the younger audiences and families with whom she wanted to connect.
Obama also believes in celebrity "amplification" of her messages and has reached out personally to ask famous friends to help her boost her initiatives, Morales said.
When her media team promoted a celebration of the first lady's health awareness campaign with a challenge called "Gimme Five" they had planned to invite a relatively small number of Obama's famous supporters to demonstrate how they stay healthy. But Obama decided to expand the list. Eventually, they had Beyonc sharing a workout video on Instagram, Seacrest doing squat-thrust exercises on camera, and Conan O'Brien doing chin-ups alongside comedian Kevin Hart.
Her approach seems to have worked. Obama remains more popular than her husband. Nearly three-quarters of the public have a favourable opinion of her, according to the Pew Research Centre.
Obama has said that she is not sure what she will do next but that interesting offers are rolling in. As her family settles into a new home in Washington, she has said, she will take time to consider the options - but will not go quietly into retirement.
