Challenge

Each year, Susan G. Komen Kentucky relies heavily on their events to generate funds to support their mission of providing local breast health education, screenings, treatment support programs and breast cancer research. In an effort to increase awareness of the nonprofit and local breast health, Komen Kentucky celebrates Breast Cancer Awareness Month each October. For their 2019 efforts, Komen Kentucky relied on PriceWeber to lead its public relations and social media initiatives.

Objectives

• Increase brand awareness and local breast cancer support.
• Drive traffic to the Komen Kentucky website to increase the number of registered participants and funds raised for the 2019 Louisville Race for the Cure held in October.
• Increase the brand’s loyal following on social media.
• Encourage a larger amount of donations to Susan G. Komen Kentucky in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month from the previous year.
• Strengthen a week-long fundraising initiative called Confections for the Cure, which allows restaurants and Komen Kentucky to team up and feature a special pink dessert to kick off Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
• Help come up with new event ideas for Komen Kentucky to help them reach a new audience in Louisville.

Solution

PriceWeber developed an integrated public relations and social media strategy that involved the creation of ads for different media publications, breast cancer survivor interviews in local publications, media segments and on-site interviews to promote events, and boosted social media posts and event page promotions. These efforts generated a substantial amount of earned media coverage statewide, and dramatically increased the brand’s reach, engagement and impressions across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Results

For social media, PriceWeber leveraged a limited budget to increase awareness of the brand and establish a wider audience over the course of two months, generating a 1.45% increase in followers across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, compared to a 0.84% increase the previous year.

• In the first month alone, the brand saw an increase in numbers across all social platforms of 304% in impressions and 212% in engagement, compared to the previous month’s social media performance.
• During September and October of 2019, engagement on the brand’s social media channels was up by 593.24% from the brand’s efforts during September and October of 2018.
• Overall social media efforts increased impressions by 441.98% compared to the previous year.
• Based on 2019’s efforts, the overall number of link clicks increased by 655.52% compared to the previous year.
• PriceWeber conducted local interviews to have video assets on social media beginning during Breast Cancer Awareness Month. These video assets, the promotion of breast cancer events, earned media coverage and the promotion of community partnerships helped Komen Kentucky with overall numbers and engagement for social media as a whole. Rather than relying on national Susan G. Komen content, PriceWeber heavily promoted local content that resonated more with Komen Kentucky’s audience.

For public relations, the brand received more media coverage in September and October 2019 than during the same timeframe in 2018. During this timeframe in 2019, the brand received 72 pieces of earned media coverage, compared to 13 for the same timeframe in 2018 – an increase of 453.8%.

• Earned media coverage generated approximately 73,000 views and was shared via social channels over 998 times.
• PriceWeber’s leadership of Confections for the Cure 2019 increased restaurant participation rate by 50% and grew revenues for the event in by 77.05%.
• PriceWeber secured additional partnerships to raise awareness of local breast health and the brand. This included lighting the Big Four Bridge pink for an evening at Louisville Waterfront Park, partnering with Ohio Valley Wrestling for a special evening dedicated to Komen Kentucky and raising awareness about breast cancer, and helping Komen Kentucky host a fundraising event at a local restaurant that aimed to raise awareness about metastatic breast cancer.