NonProfit PR Awards: Video/Podcast Program

Campaign: To Catch a Pirate

Winner: Business Software Alliance & FD

In the computer community, software piracy is a serious problem, resulting in the loss of billions of dollars a year. Wishing to mitigate this issue, the Business Software Alliance (BSA) launched a viral marketing campaign that sought to integrate new and more creative approaches into the organization’s efforts to garner leads of reported software piracy, while increasing the traffic to BSA’s online reporting Web site, nopiracy.com.

The linchpin of the campaign’s efforts was a humorous two-minute video, entitled “To Catch a Pirate,” based on MSNBC’s To Catch a Predator series. The objective was to generate attention to the problem of software piracy. The video was then selected on specific Web sites and social media networks to effect word-of-mouth and viral actions. The video also provided viewers with the tools to send the video to multiple e-mail addresses and other media outlets.

The video has been viewed close to 28,000 times on YouTube, and hits to the nopiracy.com site were up 72% following the first 10 days of the video’s release. There was also coverage in leading tech journals and blogs, including Wired and TechCrunch, which further drove traffic to the Web to view the video.

Honorable Mentions:

American Society for Microbiology: Microbe World Video—Since its debut 2007, MicrobeWorld Video has aired 31 episodes, which have been downloaded more than 2 million times from iTunes and YouTube.

Defense Media Activity/US Naval Institute & CHINFO: Remembering the Battle of Midway—In order to pay tribute to the 67th anniversary of the Battle of Midway, the U.S. Naval Institute created a special four-part podcast series, which has since received more than 195,000 combined feed requests from iTunes and downloads from BlogTalkRadio.

American Speech-Language-Hearing Association: ASHA Podcast Series—The ASHA created a 12-minute podcast that highlights ASHA research journals, and is promoted through ASHA’s Web site. It has received 25,000 views and downloads from January 2008 to August 2009.

Seattle City Light: Shrinking Big Foot—To make Seattle City Light’s Kids Exploring Energy site as interactive as possible, a video was created and posted on Seattle.gov to give kids a behind-the-scenes look at energy consumption in their home city.

Bloomington Hospital: Jim’s Story—To highlight the hospital’s Regional Heart & Vascular Institute, heart attack survivor Jim Weigand and his wife Tally were interviewed. The podcast helped to provide consumers with a vivid image of the institute.

November 9, 2009