Company: Time Warner Cable, Charlotte Division
Timeframe: Ongoing
Time Warner Cable's Charlotte division had been active in community outreach programs for years, but the overall effect was scattershot: small amounts given to numerous causes across 13
counties. "It didn't have any real community impact," says the division's director of public affairs, Jessica Graham. "Customers weren't aware of it; we needed focus."
The PR team created a strategic outreach effort to better engage the community, by developing opportunities to tell Time Warner's story about how it was giving back. The company conducted
extensive research to determine what the community needed most and considered most important, canvassing customers, non-customers, elected officials and employees. The region Time Warner Cable
Charlotte covers is diverse, encompassing the city of Charlotte as well as rural areas, so Graham's team gleaned a lot of interesting information from a cross-section of society. "The folks we
surveyed said they felt better about a company whose employees were actively engaged, rather than just giving money," Graham notes. "Crime and education were topics that came to the top every time in
every community. The community also felt positively about supporting teachers and such public service folks as police and firefighters."
Time Warner Cable had always been supportive of causes that affected children and education. The Hands Helping Heroes campaign would support all those people who work to prevent crime through
education, from teachers and police officers to emergency medial technicians, nonprofits and firefighters.
The campaign has several moving parts. First was a grant application program. Groups within each of the 13 counties Time Warner serves were invited to apply for a grant to fund a project that
would help them prevent crime through education. Says Graham, "The most important issues were how the program would enable them to partner with TWC; we did not want to just put a check in the mail.
We wanted a partnership that would involve employees."
The company received 18 applications, well beyond what the team anticipated. Of the 13 counties, Time Warner received applications from seven, including very small counties. The PR team reviewed
applications, determined which ones would get funding, and made the announcement in March. (See sidebar p. 5 for a description of the programs Hands Helping Heroes is funding.)
The second piece is a volunteer system for employees of Time Warner Cable. "We have an existing program we are rebranding under the Hands Helping Heroes label," says Graham. She says the program's
name is great for an outreach program, because the employees are the hands who help the community. "We are getting employees very visibly involved," she says. The branding will include T-shirts with
the campaign logo, and the group will partner with visible projects to keep the program and company names in the public eye.
To reveal the programs that would receive funding, Time Warner Cable held a media event March 7, garnering generous positive feedback from the media and the community. Two TV news stories and five
print stories resulted from the event. In addition, "We've had tremendous feedback from elected officials, saying how happy they are that we're doing this," says Graham. The Web site blew the doors
off their expectations, recording 20 million page views after the event. "We're pretty pleased with that," says Graham.
To launch the program, the team went out into the community for face-to-face meetings in each county where Time Warner Cable operates, inviting police and fire departments, the mayors of each
county, county commissioners, and school officials. A presentation informed each county what Time Warner Cable planned to do with Hands Helping Heroes. The team arranged approximately 20 such
community meetings.
For any PR professional contemplating a similar outreach project, Graham has advice:
- Do Your Homework: one of the most important things is to make sure you do some kind of research. Graham's team hired a firm and did phone surveys; the company really invested in it,
something Graham recognizes not every organization can do. But, she says, there are other ways to gather the information you need, such as focus groups, one-on-one conversations with community
leaders and employees and Survey Monkey questionnaires (visit
http://www.surveymonkey.com to learn how you can sign up for this inexpensive, Web-based research service). "Do whatever you can so you know you are
meeting the needs of the community, not what you think the need ought to be. That's a must-do," she says.
- Get Executive Buy-In: In addition, it's crucial to tie the program into your company or client's business objectives, so you get buy-in from senior management to keep the resources
flowing. For Time Warner Cable, the important thing was to make sure senior executives saw how the program would have an impact in the community that would be noticed by customers and internally. The
company wanted a program and a cause it could "own." Previously, the causes it supported were about kids, education and the arts, which cut a very broad swath. By narrowing the focus to preventing
crime through education, Time Warner Cable felt it could create more stir among its target groups.
- Involve Your Employees: Employee involvement was another critical element. Among the employees, an ambassador team was created using people from every department, who judged the grant
applications. This team generated employee buy-in, because they knew who had applied and for what. By using employees to conduct research and to judge the entries, more volunteers were encouraged to
help reach the company's objectives and participate in the program.
- Generate Buzz: "You have to generate as much PR as possible for what you are doing, internally and externally," says Graham. "Celebrate successes, make sure the community is aware, and
tailor your outreach so the media pays attention. I can go to the media and say 'crime and education are the most important subjects to their readers,' and it gives them a built-in angle." Because
the team did its homework up front, it can present solid numbers to the media to back up its claims.
- Talk It Up: In terms of media outreach, Graham found the company received an unexpected bonus. Some media turned up uninvited - but certainly welcome - at their initial meeting with the
community last year. That serendipitous media attention helped boost the good response the PR team was already receiving. Then, the team also reached out to members of the media individually and
pitched stories. The company sent out some of its "Heroes, along with a media advisory, to announce the program's launch on March 7. We had three press conferences in one day, one in each of the
project communities," says Graham. "We will stay in touch with them as the projects roll through the year and achieve milestones, and we will keep reaching out to the media. It helps that the
projects are about subjects they know are important to their readers, because of the research."
As the campaign continues to unfold, it will be carefully monitored by other divisions of Time Warner Cable across the U.S., for possible implementation in other regions. Stay tuned for more Time
Warner campaign success stories.
Contact:
Jessica Graham, 704.378.2958, [email protected]
Jumping The Hurdles
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Needed: Research - One of the major challenges of doing a community outreach program, according to Jessica Graham, director, public affairs, Time Warner Cable's Charlotte
Division, is to "make sure you meet the needs of communities, not what you think they need. I think we've been effective in doing that. We had the research to back up what we decided to do."
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Keep it fair - Another challenge in this particular campaign was that some of the smaller communities were concerned that the money generated by "Hands Helping Heroes" would all go to
Charlotte, the big city in Time Warner Cable's Charlotte service area, but the PR team wanted to be even-handed in providing its funding. "We heard that concern loud and clear," says Graham.
"Everyone wanted the same funding and attention Charlotte would get. Two projects out of the three awarded are in outlying counties, and only one is in Charlotte."
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When you can't give cash, give help - Because the group was making a transition from generating a lot of small corporate responsibility ripples in a big pond to creating a much larger
wave the entire community would notice, many causes to which it had previously contributed were concerned they would no longer receive Time Warner Cable's help. " We had to stop doing some things,"
says Graham. "We offer in-kind resources as much as we can to groups that we are no longer in such close partnership with now." Under the Hands Helping Heroes program, every group that applied for
funding, even those the program couldn't fund, was offered in-kind resources through volunteered aid and other means.
Those in-kind projects include public service announcements, videos, a tutoring/mentoring program called Time to Read - it depends on the group and what their needs are, says Graham. This element
of the campaign is similar to providing pro bono PR work in a lot of ways. "Groups need more exposure to raise money for their efforts because no one is aware of what they are doing," says Graham.
"It's interesting how valuable that kind of resource is to some of these groups...In-kind resources in some cases are more valuable than the cash."
The Envelope, Please...
The projects that received funding from the first iteration of the Hands Helping Heroes program are:
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The Gastonia Police Department will receive $50,000 to implement a "call-in" program that is aimed at reducing violent crime by getting offenders off the street, offering them a
chance to turn their lives around or face prison. These young offenders present success stories to educate middle- and high-school students so they don't make the same mistakes. Gastonia has the
second-highest rate of violent crime in the state. "This is a significant program that can get violent offenders off the streets and positively impact our entire community," says Terry L. Sult, chief
of police for the Gastonia Police Department. "Similar programs in other communities have succeeded in helping offenders turn their own lives around and, through educational outreach, keep middle-
school and high-school students from making the same mistakes they did."
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Kannapolis City Schools will use a $50,000 grant to launch a "ninth-grade academy" at A.L. Brown High School as part of an effort to help more students navigate the difficult transition
from middle school to high school. Currently, more than 30 percent of students who begin ninth grade at A.L. Brown fail to graduate in four years. Stemming the tide of ninth-grade dropouts is a key
to improving K-12 education in Kannapolis. "A ninth-grade academy can help us dramatically increase our graduation rate, lower our suspension and dropout rates, and improve student achievement," says
Superintendent Jo Anne Byerly of Kannapolis City Schools. "And we know that helping more kids succeed in school is the best way to keep them off the streets and away from crime."
- The Charlotte Fire Department will receive a seed grant of up to $50,000 to explore the possibility of establishing a Safety Village, a child-scale development in a town setting that
would offer a comprehensive child safety program. Children would learn about "stranger danger," bicycle and pedestrian safety, child passenger safety, and other safety topics. "Preventable injuries
are the No. 1 cause of death among children 14 and under, and Safety Village would address this sad statistic," says Luther L. Fincher Jr., chief of the Charlotte Fire Department. "While all of the
county's public safety agencies are addressing child safety issues, Safety Village would bring them all under one roof and provide an enriched educational experience for children."
CONTACTs: Terry L. Sult, 704.866.6890, [email protected];?Jo Anne Byerly, 704.938.1131; Luther L. Fincher, Jr., [email protected]