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| As part of the Hyundai Hope on Wheels initiative, a child prepares to place his handprint on a canvas at a handprint ceremony at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. More than 75 such events were launched across 30 states to raise pediactric cancer awareness. Photo courtesy of Finn Partners |
Company: Hyundai
Agency: Finn Partners
Timeframe:
March - Sept. 2011
According to the Pediatric Cancer Foundation, more than 160,000 children worldwide are diagnosed with cancer each year; 46 children and adolescents are diagnosed with cancer every day in the U.S. alone; and a child will lose his or her battle with cancer every four hours. It was in 1998 when similar staggering statistics made such an impression on a group of New England-based Hyundai dealers, they decided to take action. They created Hyundai Hope on Wheels (HOW) to help raise funds and awareness for the disease. By 2007, HOW received official nonprofit status and today, more than 800 Hyundai dealers across the U.S. are leading this fight against pediatric cancer.
Each September, during National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, HOW awards a significant amount of funds to pediatric cancer programs nationwide. In 2011, HOW embarked on its most extensive and ambitious multifaceted campaign to date by donating over $20 million to the cause, with $7.1 million going to 71 pediatric cancer research institutions across the country in the month of September alone.
COAST-TO-COAST
In March 2011, Finn Partners (a Ruder Finn Group company) became the AOR for HOW and was asked to build in some additional elements to the annual program that would help advance HOW’s mission. The HOW team put forth the following objectives:
• Raise awareness about the need for childhood cancer research funding.
• Garner national attention for the significant research funding HOW provides to hospitals and institutions during the month of September, Childhood Cancer Awareness month.
“Through our Hope on Wheels program, our goal is to find a cure for this horrible disease, so no family has to hear the words, ‘your child has cancer,’” says Zafar Brooks, program director for HOW and director of corporate social responsibility, Hyundai Motor America (HMA). “We also want to fund projects that will improve treatments that can eliminate harmful side effects of cures. Finally, we want to create more public awareness about this disease.”
Brooks explains that it was crucial that any PR agency HOW worked with understood the importance of the issue and the real-world life and death implications. Given the national scale and importance of HOW, the agency not only needed to implement multiple activities simultaneously, but also have experience working on health issues. Finally, the agency needed to develop a cohesive, integrated communications plan, and be able to engage the Hyundai U.S. dealer franchise network of more than 800 dealers.
As Howard Solomon, managing partner at Finn Partners explains, “Finn Partners has solid experience in the health, nonprofit and automotive industries, which placed us in the best position to support Hyundai’s Hope On Wheels.”
Finn Partners had already worked out several aspects of the campaign when, in its effort to generate additional excitement during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in September, HMA decided to add an entirely new cross-country element.
HMA wanted to drive its Tucson Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) from San Francisco to New York, stopping at children’s hospitals along the way to collect handprints that would be imprinted on the car itself from the youths impacted by the disease.
At the same time, the efforts would demonstrate the vehicle’s advanced green technology. This supportive component to HOW was branded “Hyundai Drive 4 Hope.” Finn Partners, combining its extensive experience in CSR campaigns with the fact that it had offices in all of the campaign’s key cities—New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Washington, D.C.—was ready to roll.
THE CRUNCH IS ON
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With the “Hyundai Drive 4 Hope” component added only in August, Finn and HOW had just weeks to prepare. The teams worked closely to plan the many logistics surrounding the initiative. There were a number of challenges facing the team in order to execute 71 ceremonies in just one month. “Our biggest challenge was time—we had such a short amount of it to execute such a large-scale drive,” says Joe Foster, partner, Finn Partners. “Any agency would’ve felt the stretch, but we had a very detailed plan about how we were going to get across the country, and so I think we overcame that pretty well.”
To accomplish each of its goals, Finn Partners put the following strategies into action:
• Created a number of teams internally involving its entire U.S. operations. In addition to a master team based out of L.A. to lead the overall strategy, four teams were created from the L.A., Chicago, Washington, D.C., and New York offices to manage each of HMA’s five U.S. regions.
• To ensure consistent messaging and look and feel of the program across U.S. Hyundai dealerships, Finn Partners created a 26-page “Dealer How-To Kit” that provided a template press release to locally highlight their individual HOW efforts.
RAISING HOPE
During September, Finn Partners executed 71 grant ceremonies across the country, five influencer receptions and drove the FCEV more than 4,500 miles coast to coast. Key campaign components included:
1. Event Execution: Secured Hyundai speakers and dealer attendance, as well as hospital speakers including a senior hospital rep, grant winner and patient; conducted media outreach before and after events to secure print, broadcast and online coverage; and managed on-site reporters and photographers.
2. Media Relations: Secured feature news coverage in national and local outlets as well as developed/managed social media platforms including Web site, YouTube channel, Facebook page and multiple Twitter profiles.
3 . Washington, D.C., Press Conference: HOW partnered with the Congressional Childhood Cancer Caucus for a press conference on Capitol Hill with more than 300 guests.
4. Hope on Wheels 5K Race
& Walk: Executed HOW’s first annual 5K in Rancho Santa Margarita, Calif., to raise money for the pediatric cancer program at Hyundai’s local hospital, CHOC Children’s.
LANDSLIDE RESULTS
In the end, the campaign earned some remarkable numbers (see the graphic for highlights):
• Traditional Media: Secured high visibility with more than 114 million media impressions and 120 media outlets attending the Handprint Ceremony and additional influencer events. Coverage included Wired, The New York Times, Today, AOL/Huffington Post, ABC, NBC, Fox and CBS stations nationwide.
• Social Media: In September there were 12,120 page views on HyundaiHopeOnWheels.org and 6,000 unique visitors. Additional results included 1,513 new fans on Facebook; 148 new followers on Twitter with 81 retweets and 175 mentions leading to over 100,000 Twitter impressions; over 3,000 views of Hope Grant videos on YouTube.
• Hope on Wheels 5K Race & Walk: Secured nearly 1,000 participants, 12 sponsors and more than 20 million media impressions.
According to Foster, one of the key elements of the campaign was the “Drive for Hope,” concept itself. “The idea of Hope on Wheels was inspiring,” he says. “Plus, it just made so much sense from a PR perspective, leveraging the core part of the program that was already in place, when kids impacted by cancer place their handprints on vehicles during the grant ceremonies. Combining this with hundreds of handprints on one vehicle traveling across the country made perfect sense.”
A DEEPER LOOK
As Foster and his team prepare for the 2012 HOW program, he says he’d like to go deeper with the success stories, talk to doctors and researchers and highlight the difference the grant funding is making. In the meantime, HOW and Finn Partners can rest a little easier knowing the campaign brought immense awareness to two important issues: childhood cancer and Hyundai’s green technology.
CONTACT:
Zafar Brooks, [email protected]; Joe Foster, [email protected]; Howard Solomon, [email protected].