PR: A true story

Here's a great example of using public relations to jump start a marketing campaign. Last week, we launched a new Web site, http://www.giftsthatheal.org/. The brainchild of Jerry Maygarden and Katherine Champlin, president and executive director of the Baptist Health Care Foundation in Pensacola, Fla., respectively, Gifts That Heal is an on-line catalog of "gifts," each of which, once purchased, helps someone in the community. Gifts range from a one-month supply of medicine to a wig for a breast cancer patient to a walker for an elderly person. There are gifts starting at just $5 and the purchase price for each gift is a tax-deductible donation.

Obviously this type of program is a fund-raising effort that relies on donations from caring individuals, and spending a lot of money to market it would defeat its purpose. So from the start, care was taken to ensure the program utilized the strongest combination of low- and no-cost marketing tactics.

One of those tactics was public relations.

Once the Web site was live, we prepared an announcement news release and carefully built a distribution list of editors, newscasters, promotion managers and talk show hosts. We sent the release out to these specific contacts with a personal note about the new program and then followed up with a personal call to each of them. The strategy worked. The program was unique enough in our area that the regional media were interested. And we made it easy on them by providing complete, accurate and press-ready information. We wrote copy for a 30-second public service announcement and a local community-minded radio station, CAT Country 98.7, produced it at no charge.

After just one week, the coverage has included a 7-minute live radio interview, a 5-minute news clip on a major television station that was replayed during at least 2 broadcasts and multiple coverage in the print media.

For non-profits and every other business, public relations is a marketing tactic that works. I'll continue to update this blog as more coverage happens.