NonProfit PR Awards: Event PR: >$50,000 Budget

Campaign: truth orange summer tour 2009

Winner: American Legacy Foundation & the ad*itive

Launched in 2000, the American Legacy Foundation’s truth youth smoking prevention campaign had one goal: to save lives by reducing the number of adults who begin smoking.

Every year since its inception, the truth summer tour acts as the campaign’s major grassroots initiative, reaching teens across the country each summer with important information about tobacco use.

In 2009, the summer tour was expanded to reach a tech-savvy audience of teens who communicate largely through new media channels.

To engage this tough-to-reach group, the tour focused on educating teens by having a presence in as many teen-related venues and channels as possible, especially in the digital space. Among the specific strategies used to make the tour events successful:

• Truth trucks that parked outside popular summer music and sporting events, which were accompanied by a crew of young people who conducted outreach about tobacco use;

• An advertising campaign based on the “Do you have what it takes?” message, which explores the kinds of decisions tobacco industry executives make in their day-to-day jobs; and,

• A dedicated Web site, thetruth.com, which offered visitors videos of television ads, tobacco-related facts, games and interactive quizzes.

By the end of the summer tour, truth trucks had traveled through 60 cities in 30 states. Media impressions totaled more than 71 million, and the campaign’s messages reached more than 100,000 teens.

Honorable Mentions:

BackBay Communications & Association for Corporate Growth: ACG InterGrowth 2009—The team’s PR and marketing efforts helped promote ACG’s brand as the leading global community of M&A pros and boost attendance of key audiences at the annual InterGrowth event. As a result, more than 1,700 individuals attended the event.

Marmillion + Company & America’s WETLAND Foundation: Last Stand for America’s Wetlands—The team staged four major events across South Louisiana to draw attention to the region’s rapidly shrinking coastal wetlands. All told, the effort garnered 108 million impressions, with attendance in excess of 3,000 residents.

MWW Group & Keep a Child Alive: 5th Annual Black Ball—MWW execs helped make Keep a Child Alive’s 5th annual Black Ball a success by conducting a media blitz leading up to the “red carpet” event. The result: The team raised more than enough money through the event to allocate 100% of public donations to AIDS relief in Africa.

National Foundation for Infectious Diseases & Alembic Health Communications: Immunizing the Media with a Healthy Hose of Flu Facts—The team staged the Annual Influenza/Pneumococcal News Conference to educate the media about seasonal flu vaccinations, including H1N1. The amplified messages reached more than 152.7 million people.

The National Needlearts Association: Stitch n’ Pitch—The Stitch n’ Pitch events, held at major and minor league baseball parks, increased consumers’ awareness of “needlearts” (a community of knitters), garnering more than 200 media placements during the 2007, 2008 and 2009 baseball seasons.

November 9, 2009