Media Relations Tie for First
The Internet age and the global era have created a market for new language skills, from Java and VRML (virtual reality markup language) to Mandarin and Cantonese.
So how could a 501(c)(3) and a PR firm build an effective campaign promoting a language that is centuries old and only the norm in one nation?
The difficult task was to convince the media that stories exist behind socially responsible movements. That is a message often lost in this era of sensational and self-serving news.
But that was the goal Warschawski Public Relations and non-profit client National Jewish Outreach Program set to promote Hebrew literacy through courses throughout the U.S. and to build recognition for NJOP.
It was a magnanimous cause, to say the least.
Fresh surveys weren't available to back the movement, but WPR leveraged available expert analysis to help convey campaign messages. Historically, experts have agreed that an estimated 80 percent of all North American Jews don't know how to read Hebrew. It's also estimated that of the 6 million North American Jews, 2 million don't identify themselves as Jews, 2 million are unaffiliated with any Jewish organization, and 1.2 million are only marginally affiliated.
But in the end, 35,000 unaffiliated and marginally affiliated Jews took free Hebrew classes at sites dotting North America and Canada.
I'd Like to Teach The World to Read
To target the many communities of Jews across the nation, Manhattan-based NJOP developed the "Read Hebrew America/Canada" campaign. It hired WPR in May 1998 to get the cause out the door.
Enter the media relations component.
With pre-event press releases filling reporters' in-boxes across the country to inspire a host of national stories, NJOP's message hinged on publicizing the more than 1,000 outreach classes planned throughout the U.S. and Canada. Slated to be held at synagogues, they were hardly settings prompting the kind of hard-news or controversial stories editors so often want to headline in 60-point type.
But PR team members were wise enough and gave the secular media exactly what they wanted: timely news. Press releases which addressed dwindling Hebrew literacy hit in the fall during the High Holidays when the non-Jewish press is most receptive to this kind of coverage.
In turn, the releases whet journalists' appetites for the main story: the announcement that tens of thousands of Jews would attend classes throughout the month of November. A bevy of front-page features to blurbs in calendars in community newspapers lit the PR fire.
The campaign's goals were impressive:
- WPR brought in nearly 400 unique pieces of press coverage, with a total circulation of 20 million-plus readers targeted;
- More than 100 million households were reached through TV media placements;
- Stories ran in the Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Post and Baltimore Sun;
- WPR locked in a three-minute segment on CNN that featured the NJOP as a bellwether in fighting Jewish assimilation in North America.
Because the budget was only $36,000 and had to support eight months of media relations work, WPR courted high-profile press outlets such as the Associated Press, CNN and NBC News.
That's an undertaking in itself. Imagine pitching the merits of what some view as a feel-good story when wars, political scandal and economic crises dominate the news.
Unfettered by that potential roadblock, the plan still was to corral large-scale coverage to in turn feed smaller media outlets' interest. And by relying on this "trickle-down" philosophy, WPR didn't have to spend an inordinate amount of time pitching and proving the "newsworthiness" of the story.
In the media relations arena, that's often half the battle.
Yet NJOP knew that not only was its cause noble, it was socially relevant and might actually change behavior. Often, the latter is an uphill battle in PR, but NJOP and WPR beat the odds.