Atlanta Public Relations Team Lands Holiday Coverage

12-31-2008

Summary

In the two weeks around Christmas, Write2Market’s public relations kicked into high gear, delivering program materials for Marietta-based Casteel Heating and Cooling that created major media buzz, including:

  • Three prime time television features
  • 11 feature stories in combined media (newspaper and radio)
  • Over 2.29  million people in the metro Atlanta area reached
  • Over $25,000 in in-kind exposure thanks to public relations outeach, not advertising dollars

It was two weeks before Christmas when John Hillis at Casteel Heating and Cooling decided the charitable giving program he’d been working on needed to go public. The privately held, 20 year old Marietta-based Casteel Heating and Cooling knew that many of its neighbors were suffering because unsafe or non-functional furnaces kept them from being warm during the Christmas season. John Hillis and company founder Bob Casteel wanted to spearhead a community effort to fix these situations, and needed to get the word out, fast.

Hillis found Write2Market online and contacted the agency to see if they could do the job. That Friday, meeting in Write2Market’s conference room, the Casteel Heating & Cooling owners signed a media relations retainer. Write2Market got to work detailing a program almost overnight so that Casteel could immediately begin to benefit from their program concept, which the team named simply, “Casteel Christmas.”

Results of media relations outreach program

The next Monday, the team at Casteel had a complete set of program materials developed by W2M writers over the weekend, including:

·         Press release

·         Program overview

·         Program guidelines that dovetailed with similar programs in the local area

·         Web copy

·         Fact sheet

·         Sponsorship brochure

Casteel quickly provided feedback. With final materials to support the media outreach, the W2M media pitching team kicked into high gear lining up journalist interviews with only days before Christmas. At the same time, Casteel began using the materials to canvas sponsorship support. The two efforts dovetailed into a truly successful series of multiple media exposures, including:

·         Several  local families helped

·         Radio feature stories and PSAs

·         Television feature stories and depth coverage

·         Sponsorship from kudzu.com/Cox

·         Newspaper feature stories

·         Sponsorship interest expressed by Cobb EMC, Atlanta Gas Light, and others

Use public relations to spotlight your efforts

If you have a program people need to know about—let us help make your dream reality. Contact Write2Market today at 404-419-6677 x 100.