2011 CSR Awards: Blog

Winner: Kaiser Permanente ‘Dispatches From Haiti’

Forty-eight hours after the deadly Jan. 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti, doctors from Kaiser Permanente were en route to the disaster area. When the first physicians on the ground sent e-mails describing the extent of the carnage and their life-saving efforts, it become apparent that a more extensive communications platform was needed.

Thus, six days later Kaiser Permanente launched the blog “Dispatches From Haiti,” which provided a single outlet through which doctors and nurses could share observations with colleagues, KP employees, members and interested persons worldwide. Five-hundred-word blog entries were typed out by caregivers on their smartphones and sent to Kaiser Permanente’s PR team in the U.S. Within KP, the blog was regularly e-mailed to employees—from executive leadership on down. Externally, the team pitched the blog to local and national journalists looking for different angles on the quake and the global relief efforts. Posts were also promoted through several Twitter handles and through KP’s Facebook Fan page.

The results were stellar: Eleven different caregivers made 28 total posts, among them surgeons, pediatricians, a psychologist and a registered nurse; 208 blog comments were generated; the blog received 37,000 page views in the first 12 days of launch; mentions in more than 20 national, regional and local pubs and blogs; and 5,000 views of the coverage on KP’s corporate news Web site. Importantly, Dispatches From Haiti showcased Kaiser Permanente’s strength as a concerned corporate citizen. —SVC

Campaign Reflection: “I would have thought a little more out-of-the-box and perhaps armed our traveling caregivers with inexpensive digital video technology so they could capture and send back some short video clips,” says Vince Golla, digital media and syndication director at Kaiser Permanente. “Not at all a regret, as Dispatches From Haiti has succeeded beyond our wildest expectations, but I think that adding more multimedia than we had would have made a great blog even greater.”

Honorable Mentions:
USANA Health Sciences – What’s Up, USANA?: Newsworthy and often exclusive content led to 185,000 page views in the first nine months of 2010.

Tiller LLC – Rob Densen’s Huffington Post Blog: CSR Matters: Quality postings featuring original content ably communicated Tiller’s CSR expertise.


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March 8, 2011