PORTLAND, Ore. – The top public relations campaigns from Oregon were on display on Nov. 4 at the 2009 PRSA Portland-Metro Chapter Spotlight Awards. This annual event serves to recognize strategic initiatives that produce great results, and the CMD Agency Earned Media team picked up four awards during the course of the evening.
These awards showcase the reasons behind the CMD team’s transformation from solely focusing on public relations to reclassifying its activities as earned media, which better describes the approach for seamlessly leveraging both social and traditional PR practices.
“To us, earned media is the attention, reputation, credibility and awareness that is earned organically (non-paid) through value of the information and the merit of the interaction you have with the audience,” said Darcie Meihoff, APR, managing director of CMD’s earned media group. “That includes a strong combination of solid PR thinking and the ability to tap the latest opportunities social media presents. It embodies our commitment to remain on the forefront of emerging trends in communication while continuing to deliver great results.”
Here’s a brief recap of CMD’s work that received 2009 Spotlight Awards:
JELD-WEN Contest Scares up Terrifying Utility Bills – Spotlight Award
Situation
With rising energy costs and a growing interest in environmental concerns, energy efficiency is top of mind with homeowners.
Strategy
The CMD team created the JELD-WEN Scariest Utility Bills Contest to tout the importance of home energy efficiency and find a real-life example to prove that efficient windows and doors can help homeowners save money.
Results
The contest was wildly successful, nearly doubling the contest entries objective and earning placements in publications including the Chicago Sun Times and Houston Chronicles. The U.S. Department of Energy even expressed interest in using JELD-WEN’s contest winner as a case study of their own, positioning JELD-WEN as the expert on reducing energy costs.
Be sure to check out this year’s Utility Bill Bailout Contest. It might just win you new JELD-WEN ENERGY STAR® qualified windows and doors and an appearance on an upcoming episode of the nationally syndicated show Today’s Homeowner with Danny Lipford. http://www.jeld-wen.com/bailout/
JELD-WEN Lighthouse Campaign – Spotlight Award
Situation
JELD-WEN Windows and Doors needed to raise awareness and directly link its products with reliability, a crucial factor from homeowners, builders and remodelers when considering which windows and doors to purchase.
Strategy
The CMD team created a campaign that helped JELD-WEN walk its reliability talk and prove product performance by helping restore highly visible landmarks, America’s lighthouses, which also face some of the toughest climate conditions in the world.
Results
The campaign has helped build JELD-WEN’s image of reliability, created strong product performance proof points, and generated millions of media impressions, all while fostering tremendous goodwill.
The CMD Earned Media team also earned two Award of Merit honors for “An Exploration into the Digital Frontier for Intel and Lenovo” and “Building the HealthCareGoesMobiles.com Virtual Community.”
