PR around Chess Billboard Honored by PR News
January 13, 2014
The public relations campaign to capitalize on last fall’s chess-themed billboard along Interstate 70 has received national recognition.
PR News, a national industry organization, selected the effort as a finalist for its top awards of the year, in the category of “PR on a Shoestring Budget.” A ceremony to deliver awards to the finalists will be held in February at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
The honor puts Webster University in interesting company, with some other well-known PR campaigns that made national news last year. The six finalists in the category are:
– Canadian Dental Hygienists Association and Impact Public Affairs – Sports Mouthguards: Putting More Bite into Injury Prevention
– Global Strategy Group – Scouts for Equality: The Campaign to End Discrimination Against Gay Scouts
– Pollock Communications – ASH and Hypertension Research Awareness Campaign
– Uniomedia Communications – Szuno – Our Dreams: A Support Campaign for the – Development of Mostly Roma Kids and Their Families in East Hungary
– Weber Shandwick with Reboot – Taking a Tech Detox: National Day of Unplugging
– Webster University – In the Heart of Football Country, a Different Kind of Champion Behind the Effort
The art and concept for the billboard, which juxtaposes the academic focus of Division-III athletes against a series of football-themed billboards on the same stretch of highway featuring Division-I powerhouse University of Missouri-Columbia, was conceived by the Creative Services office in Global Marketing & Communications.
GMC’s Public Relations office then leveraged that tactical change to the billboard display — the billboard previously showed a more traditional Webster campaign — into a PR effort that caught the eye of several key media and put Webster in the spotlight.
The Wall Street Journal wrote a story that opens: “Webster University doesn’t have the huge budget or hulking athletes of Southeastern Conference schools, but it has something they don’t: the national-championship chess team.”
The Associated Press followed, and within three weeks the billboard was featured in 97 news stories locally, regionally and nationally through traditional media, reaching a potential audience of more than 49 million during the period of Oct. 30, 2013 through Nov. 21, 2013.
The stories, and reactions to them, also fueled debates about sports and values in higher education, as well as coverage from trade publications such as Adweek.
Source: http://blogs.webster.edu
Why not a billboard featuring Nakamura, the best American player in history?