NonProfit PR Awards: Digital PR and Marketing

Campaign: Your Choice to Empower Campaign

Winner: The Allstate Foundation & Fleishman-Hillard

Research shows that one in four women have experienced domestic violence directly, and more than half of all Americans know someone who has been involved in such a situation.

Seeking to help overcome the perception of domestic violence as a taboo subject by encouraging a dialogue, The Allstate Foundation (TAF) tapped Fleishman-Hillard; the team set out to promote the cause through TAF’s overarching message of economic empowerment.

In addition to this message, the team’s strategy hinged on drawing an online audience to the mission—a natural step given the pre-existing online destination that FH Digital had created for The Allstate Foundation to educate consumers about domestic violence and to provide survivors with tools for establishing economic independence. The site—www.ClickToEmplower.org—became the springboard for the “Your Choice to Empower Campaign.”

Launched on July 15, 2009, the campaign encouraged users to support their favorite charities by voting daily for one of TAF’s partner organizations. Leveraging additional digital channels and online voting mechanisms, the team implemented—and then sustained—the contest through digital marketing, word-of-mouth and social media activation.

As a result of the aggressive outreach, www.ClicktoEmpower.org’s traffic skyrocketed. In just two months, the Your Choice to Empower Campaign garnered 6 million impressions, more than 300,000 community votes and 210,000 unique site visitors. The partner organization winner—Charity Cars—received a $100,000 grant from TAF to assist its own efforts to assist domestic violence victims’ recovery.

Honorable Mentions:

CommunicationWorks: Assessing the Effectiveness of School Leaders—CommunicationWorks helped the Wallace Foundation disseminate a link to its new report, Assessing the Effectiveness of School Leaders: New Directions and New Processes, via an e-postcard, in turn prompting an exponential increase in traffic to the foundation’s site.

Hill & Knowlton & Georgia Department of Community Affairs: You Gotta Be Kidding Recycling Campaign—H&K worked with the GDCA to executive a statewide marketing campaign to increase recycling, mobilizing communities via online platforms. The results: 1,300+ Flickr uploads, 2,200 Facebook members and 7,500 unique site visitors.

November 9, 2009