At Northwestern Mutual, where numbers are the company's bread
and butter, the pressure to quantify PR is a longstanding element
of the corporate culture.
"We work in a company that is so analytical," says Deanna
Tillisch, director of public relations. "Attorneys, accountants and
actuaries make up 90 percent of the company."
In this numbers-centric environment, PR campaigns based on
quantifiable metrics and powerful front-end research are key to
success.
For example, the company has a well-established summer
internship program and looks to recruit heavily among young
professionals under the age of 26. It isn't difficult to recruit
employees to the national office. But getting field employees for
the insurance giant isn't as easy. In 1997, the PR team developed a
research-based initiative to help boost local recruiting
efforts.
The team worked with Harris Interactive to survey the first
class that would graduate from college in the new millennium. The
survey, conducted in 1997 as the class entered college, examined
the "Millennium Generation's" hopes and aspirations in order to get
a better understanding of the teenagers' value system and what they
wanted in life.
In 2001, Northwestern and Harris partnered for a second time to
conduct "Generation 2001: The Second Study," as the class prepared
to graduate from college. The PR team used the study for a variety
of purposes, including building messages that would better appeal
to the next generation of employees and generating widespread media
coverage. But the data's key use was to serve as an important tool
for recruiters in their efforts to build new relationships with
colleges and universities and directly with students.
Packaging the Research
Tillisch says she leaves the survey itself to the experts. "We
tell [Harris] what we want to find out, and they craft the
questions."
In each year, Harris surveyed 2,001 students. Once Harris had
completed the 2001 survey, the PR team (five dedicated members in
the home office, headed by Tillisch) took over, turning raw results
into a useful tool for recruiting. The team:
- Developed a consumer information kit including a brochure with
facts and figures from the study, the complete report, a list of
colleges and universities that had participated, a comparison of
results to those from 1997, and results from a smaller survey
conducted with close to 600 members of the class of 2001 in the
wake of Sept. 11 - Created a communications toolkit for recruiters, including a
plan of action, key messages, FAQs, a grid of "generational
differences," sample letters to colleges and universities,
presentations for a variety of audiences, a customizable news
release, bylined articles for placement in college newspapers - Developed media materials and media-trained Tillisch to serve
as the spokesperson to reporters on the Generation 2001 Study, and
worked with outside vendors to create an SMT and an RMT
Recruiters used the survey to build relationships with college
administrations and get onto college campuses - the research has
huge appeal from an academic standpoint. Once they were on
campuses, bylined articles in the college papers and fun materials
like a quiz allowing students to compare their own responses to
survey questions to the findings of the study helped get students
directly involved.
And a better understanding of this generation - i.e. the fact
that they are tremendously career-oriented and ambitious, but also
want to give back to the community - helped Northwestern and its
recruiters understand what messages about the company to emphasize
to potential employees in order to position itself as "not your
dad's company." In fact, the results were so compelling that even
the Surgeon General and the Secretary of the Navy made calls to
Northwestern to find out more about their own key target
audiences.
Results
The survey results got recruiters in to conduct major
presentations at schools like University of Georgia, Marquette
University and University of Wisconsin. Each presentation gleaned
an average of 25 leads and five interviews. Coaches, professors and
administrators raved about the survey, and between 1996 and 2001,
Northwestern doubled the number of recruits to its field force.
It's not possible to prove that the Generation 2001 Survey was
entirely responsible for the jump, but it certainly was a major
contributing factor.
Campaign Stats
Timeframe: Study first conducted in 1997, 2001 effort began in
Sept. 2000, and Northwestern continues to track the results that
are still rolling in from recruiters and from the media
2001 Budget: Conducting a study like this one is not
inexpensive, Tillisch admits. The study itself put the team in the
six-figure range:
- Conduct Study - $140,000
- Manage Project - $35,000
- Manage Media - $25,000
- Ntl. Materials - $70,000
- Field Materials - $75,000
- Media Training - $4,000
- Total - $349,000
Tillisch conducted an extensive cost benefits analysis for
senior management, proving the worth of a fairly expensive research
and PR project.
Challenges & Solutions
One of the biggest challenges, Tillisch says, is to manage a
project with such a breadth of audiences: from national media, to
students, to university faculty and administrators. The solution
for her has been to create separate materials for all these
audiences and then outsource appropriately.
She and her team, along with individual agencies handling
recruiting in local areas, carefully train the often young
recruiters about using the materials with students. Having turnkey
presentations and articles available to use with various audiences
also helps the recruiters to win any audience.
Contact: Tillisch, [email protected]