Earned Media: "Putting the ‘Storm’ in Storm Water" 2015-2017

About the Program

Category: Civic Education and Public Information (Best in Category)

Year: 2017

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Storm Water Services is a stormwater utility and multijurisdictional agency combining Mecklenburg County staff and resources with the City of Charlotte and the six towns within the County. This award application is submitted on behalf of Mecklenburg County endeavors as well as for Storm Water Services. Background: Storm Water Services is required by statute to educate residents, commuters, and the public about flood safety, water quality, and stormwater-related volunteering opportunities. Starting in 2015, in the face of tight advertising budgets and competing for media inventory with commercial and retail advertisers, staff devised strategies to create an earned-media campaign that would match or exceed existing paid budgets. Strategy: Create a top-of-mind correlation for journalists and assignment editors to think of stormwater topics (flood safety, water quality and volunteer opportunities) and to request interviews from Storm Water Services staff whenever storms are forecasted. Implementation: The most successful strategies evolved from Media Relations and Outreach strategies, namely establishing staff as subject matter experts for stories, providing reliable sources for environmental concerns, providing transparency into subject matter, responding promptly to inquiries, building story depth and following on social media, and providing story ideas and content. Less-successful strategies included the traditional approaches of writing press releases and annual reports. Results: Since March 2015, staff have conducted 97 interviews for 142 published stories. For clarity, not all interviews resulted in stories; and, some interviews were attended by multiple outlets who then each published their own stories. These results do not include stories that aired multiple times across multiple newscasts on the same outlet. The value of this strategy is an estimated minimum of $177K (based on 5.0 median household rating across market newscasts multiplied by number of stories and the average price per point advertising rate for 60-seconds, assuming story airs only once).