Winner: U.S. Green Building Council—Top 10 LEED States
The U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Top 10 States for LEED campaign is one of the organization’s most important and highly visible public affairs campaigns, and it is maintained on a rolling, annual basis.
USGBC uses its Top 10 States campaign to make important connections with key policymakers and public officials, help raise the profile of its local chapters in key locations across the country and garner media coverage that helps USGBC raise brand awareness for LEED and public awareness of the green building movement more broadly. Since January 2014, the Top 10 States for LEED has proven enormously successful in achieving these goals.
As a result of all of the campaign’s federal and public official outreach, social media was higher than in previous years. Seventeen congressional offices helped USGBC promote the Top 10 campaign via social media in February 2015.
As a result of a satellite media tour, there were 19 local TV stories aired in 10 of the nation’s top 100 media markets, 10 radio stories in top 100 media markets, and three additional TV stories placed in other media markets falling just outside of the top 100 in 2014. USGBC followed this up with a satellite media tour that produced 18 TV appearances in 2015 (two national, 10 top 100) and another 15 radio segments (six national, eight top 100).
Sending out a national press release and a press release specific to each of the Top 10 States for LEED resulted in 240 unique articles. These placements were highly important because they allowed USGBC to help elevate the profile of their local chapter leaders, who were all featured prominently in their state press releases and who served as primary points of contact for incoming media inquiries in the state.
Honorable Mentions:
• Compassion International - Rebuilding Haiti
• Edelman - American Lung Association's LUNG FORCE
• Girl Scouts of the USA - Girl Scouts Adds a ‘Byte’ to Its Iconic Cookie Program
• Humane Society Silicon Valley - Eddie the Terrible
• United Nations Foundation - Public Affairs Team