You don’t want to get into a PR contest with Southwest Airlines. But that’s what Hill+Knowlton Strategies and Virgin America did when the U.S. Department of Justice ordered American Airlines in late 2013 to release hundreds of gates around the nation to bidding by low-cost airlines. Delta, Virgin, and SWA all went after the two gates at Dallas’ Love Field.

For its good-humored, high-pressure, imaginative work for Virgin that resulted in victory—a triumph that rode on hundreds of millions of favorable media impressions—Hill+Knowlton Strategies wins top honors in the Best Press Event/Media Tour category of PR Daily’s 2014 Media Relations Awards.

Given SWA’s influence in Dallas, the fact that the public identified Southwest with Love Field, and Southwest’s incorporation of Love Field as a big part of its brand (it touts its “LUVing corporate culture”), Virgin faced an uphill battle to convince the Dallas city manager to award it the gates.

Virgin hired Hill+Knowlton’s Dallas branch to develop a local media list pronto, schedule the opening press conference of the campaign for the two gates, and organize media interviews with Virgin CEO David Cush and Chairman of the Board Don Carty. 

Cush would also speak at the press conference and “open plane” event for local media and supporters at a Love Field hangar, where Virgin began selling tickets from Love Field to cities in the U.S. good after Oct. 13, 2014, when the Wright Amendment expired. (The 1979 Wright Amendment had largely limited air traffic out of Love Field to destinations in Texas.)

For the final week’s media push, Hill+Knowlton and Virgin planned these stunts, events, and activities:
• A “Free Love Field” petition asking the city manager to award Virgin the gates.
• A “Cinco de Mayo” party hosted by Sir Richard Branson for Virgin supporters (a great opportunity for Dallas media to film b-roll for its coverage of Virgin’s gate campaign).
• 12 local one-on-one media interviews of Branson on the same day—in only four hours.
• A witty, light-touch, very effective microsite titled “Free Love Field.”

Was there ever a doubt? On May 12, 2014, only three weeks after the start of this media blitzkrieg, Dallas’ city manager announced that Virgin had won the gates. In those three weeks, Hill+Knowlton and Virgin had mounted a terrific assault that routed and overwhelmed the enemy:
• The Love Field ticket announcement and press conference sparked 125 million media impressions and $6.6 million in advertising value equivalency.
• The “Free Love Field” rally and the city manager’s decision earned 240 million media impressions and almost $16 million in AVE.
• Virgin America was the subject of hundreds of positive print, wire, online, and broadcast stories and social media hits, many sparked by Hill+Knowlton’s unremitting online push.

Congratulations to Hill+Knowlton Strategies-Dallas staffers Marvin Singleton, Amanda Gerards, and Katie Simon! 

You know how hard it is to get your kids to do their chores. Imagine taking them on a 6,511-mile trip through 25 cities doing weed-pulling and housecleaning for others, all to promote Dad’s app.

Gregg Murset, father of six, did this to promote his My Job Chart app—and he reaped heaps of publicity, including dozens of stories and TV spots on shows such as “Good Morning America” and Fox News.

The campaign by Asylum Public Relations’ Laura Baumgartner, Tessa Kay, and Jason Ovitt wins top honors in the Best PR Innovation category of PR Daily’s 2014 Media Relations Awards.

My Job Chart allows parents to create and assign chores to their children, assigning each chore a point value. When Junior completes a chore, he signs into the account and marks it, adding points that can be cashed in for real prizes. 

This summer, the family packed into their RV and drove thousands of miles across the country, stopping along the way to do chores for strangers in need of a helping hand, such as kids battling cancer or incurable diseases.

The media ate it up. The Work Across America Tour garnered stories on Ellen.com, People magazine’s website, “Good Morning America,” ABCNews.com, and dozens of local TV affiliates and newspapers.

The Mursets did work that helped the National MPS Society, Cookies for Kid’s Cancer, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and Folds of Honor. Families were located in each city and times were arranged for the Murset family to do chores at their homes while juggling interviews. 

Cities visited included Albuquerque, Denver, Kansas City, Chicago, Detroit, Buffalo, New York City, Baltimore, Richmond, Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Pensacola. Multiple stops were made in surrounding suburbs in each city to do chores. 
Plus, after a breakdown of their RV, the PR team and the family had to scramble to rearrange multiple interviews and TV and radio spots. All in all, a stellar effort.

The mission had a tight deadline and called for precision. The target wasn’t a military objective, but it was strategic: the op-ed section of Time magazine. The communication consultants at DStreet in Washington, D.C., were tasked with raising the visibility of Carey Lohrenz, the first female F-14 Tomcat fighter pilot in the U.S. Navy, as she pursued a speaking career. 

In the end, DStreet could proudly say “Mission accomplished,” as Lohrenz’s op-ed piece appeared in Time on the heels of the removal of the ban on women serving in combat—and won first place in the Best Op-Ed category of PR Daily’s 2014 Media Relations Awards.

The mission had two objectives: Create significant Web traffic to Lohrenz’s business page, and push negative content driven by opponents of women in combat off Google’s first search page. When Pentagon chief Leon Panetta announced the removal of the ban, DStreet recognized the opportunity to use the national spotlight on women in combat to gain significant high-profile coverage of Lohrenz. But the firm had only hours to jump on the opportunity.

DStreet formulated a strategy, researched high-profile national outlets and contacts, pitched media, and outlined an opinion piece for Time. 

The op-ed, titled “Time for some fearless leadership,” reached some 49 million people, helping with Lohrenz’s SEO and pushing negative coverage off the first search page. And the results made an immediate difference in Lohrenz’s business—she closed two deals in the two weeks that followed, prompting her to tell DStreet, “I just want you to know that your work matters.”

We congratulate DStreet’s Jennifer Dulles for her expert piloting of an important strategic project.

Read the op-ed at http://nation.time.com/2013/01/30/time-for-some-fearless-leadership/.

MasterCard was selected as the winner of the Best Online Newsroom/Media Center category in PR Daily’s 2014 Media Relations Awards because of its recognition that its original newsroom and blog “were text-heavy and overwhelmed [readers] with content,” and its quick corrective action. MasterCard calls its revamped news center “The MasterCard Engagement Bureau.”

After a website traffic audit in the summer of 2013, its news team concluded that while the newsroom’s engagement and traffic as a whole were stagnant, its visual content consistently performed well.

MasterCard went to work. Members of its news team looked at visually outstanding newsroom pages on Pinterest, LinkedIn, and The Coca-Cola Company’s website. They searched for a visually led editorial philosophy to boost traffic and to motivate visitors to share MasterCard’s newsroom content online:
• They redesigned the newsroom to serve journalists, bloggers, and influencers.
• They posted images, videos, and digital press kits—quick shopping for busy journalists.
• They introduced the news brief as a dominant form of content.
• They created a new PR digital avatar that invites influencers to engage with the MasterCard communications staff on Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and via email and the phone.
• They made a tremendous effort to avoid writing content “polluted” by pushy, sales-obsessed branding or marketing, asking instead, “Is this content useful to the reader?”
• They made just as determined an effort to host real conversations and share information beyond MasterCard news.
• They launched the “Cashless Pioneers Blog” to create buzz about employees, academics, governments, businesses, and others who embrace cashless payment technology.
• They set up an internal brand-publishing council of local and global MasterCard team members.
• They monitored conversations and ideas in 43 markets and 26 countries on MasterCard’s Conversation Suite, which tracks traditional and social media talk and opinion.
• They adopted as a guideline a Zabisco infographic that noted that 40 percent of people respond better to visual information than to plain text.

The real-world results justified MasterCard’s total renovation of its newsroom:
• In the first six months of 2014, monthly visits to the newsroom rose 104 percent.
• The time visitors spent in the newsroom in the first six months shot up 132 percent compared to the same period in 2013, from two minutes, 28 seconds to five minutes, 42 seconds.
• In the first six months, newsroom visitors shared its content on social media 22,000 times.
• MasterCard is the most visible company globally this year, with a 34 percent share of voice vs. competitors.

Congratulations are certainly in order for MasterCard newsroom staffers Andrew Bowins, Jennifer Stalzer, Bernhard Mors, and Rebecca Kaufman!

Last year Lionel Trains, one of the toy industry’s iconic model train companies, took the inevitable step into the digital age with the launch of its Lionel Battle Train gaming app. The move was a bid to attract a younger audience while also maintaining connection with the company’s longtime, loyal train hobbyist demographic. 

A six-month creative media campaign, carried out in partnership with SHIFT, involved the initial launch of a Facebook app that built excitement for the iPad game’s release date on the App Store and drove visitors to the game’s microsite. The Facebook presence was followed by a soft launch at E3 Gaming Expo, where the game’s trailer and beta version were previewed in the presence of gaming media that were introduced to the brand for the first time. Lionel also made attempts to cater to its more traditional audience by sharing train-related facts and history on Facebook, as well, with themes like “Freight Car Friday,” “New Product Spotlight,” and “Today in Railroad History.” 

The campaign results speak for themselves: more than 15 million impressions; a 164 percent increase in Facebook fans (with nearly one-third the desired, younger fans in the 18-34 age bracket); and a 92 percent increase in news mentions, including coverage in CNN Money, CNN Your Money, and the San Francisco Chronicle. 

Lionel Trains wins top honors in the Best New Product/Service Launch category of PR Daily’s 2014 Media Relations Awards for its deft move into digital—a move that didn’t leave old-school hobbyists behind. Congratulations to staffers Reshma Fernandes, Christopher Penn, Pete Buhler, and Ryan Hatoum for their winning work. 

The film series “EXPOSED: The Race Against Tuberculosis” powerfully communicates the urgency of tuberculosis as one of the globe’s deadliest infectious diseases, an epidemic that is growing worse as strains of TB develop drug resistance. 

Through compelling storytelling and interviews with individuals around the world who are struggling with the disease or attempting to treat it, the series demonstrates the need for developing new tuberculosis vaccines. Viewers meet a Tennessee woman who survives multidrug-resistant tuberculosis; a South African mother who volunteers in a clinical trial for a new TB vaccine; and a U.K. scientific researcher who’s working tirelessly to develop an effective vaccine. By using personal stories, the film attempts to convince decision makers in a wide variety of target audiences to act to prevent this global epidemic. It also serves as a fundraising tool, aimed at high-income and emerging economy countries that could provide vital funding for vaccine development. 

The series was constructed in four chapters to be used over a prolonged campaign, kicked off with a highly viewed trailer that coincided with World TB Day 2013. A microsite, robust social media campaign, and personal outreach to international organizations bolstered dissemination efforts. 

The film series received more than 80,000 views and has generated blogs and media coverage. Chapters in the series have been viewed at more than a dozen conferences and events by high-level decision makers in target funding areas with the hope of inspiring momentum to end the global epidemic of tuberculosis. 

Aeras wins the prize for Best Issue/Cause Advocacy Campaign in PR Daily’s 2014 Media Relations Awards for its use of compelling storytelling to advance a globally important cause. Congratulations to the Aeras team of Kari Stoever, Jamie Rosen, Annmarie Leadman, Melody Kennell, Rosella Anstine, and Jennifer Woolley. 

Insurance provider Aflac provides health insurance and benefits-related services to small businesses. During the rollout of the health care reform last year, however, the company found that the majority of its small-business customers did not fully grasp the complexity of the Affordable Care Act. In fact, they felt paralyzed at the prospect of educating their employees about it. 

Aflac stepped in to help, launching an integrated campaign that leveraged media relations, advertising, social media, employee communications, and external marketing and reached a national business audience. 

The campaign team set up an informational website, a blog, and a Health Care Reform Toolkit, as well as launching an online and print campaign and direct marketing materials. Website materials included a vitally important Health Care Reform Essentials Guide and Employer’s Guide, among others. The Toolkit provided practical tools, like ready-to-use email and letter templates for employers that fulfilled the Affordable Care Act’s communication requirements and a PowerPoint presentation comprised of a health care reform overview and FAQs. 

The company saw huge increases in visits to its online sites, a boost in account growth, and reports of overall satisfaction among clients. Media coverage of Aflac’s research findings resulted in 700 traditional media and 275 social media placements, with a total of 366,206,680 impressions. 

Hill+Knowlton Strtegies and Aflac win the prize for Best Integrated Marketing Communications in PR Daily’s 2014 Media Relations Awards for the way it seized an opportune moment to both educate a national small-business audience and raise its profile as an industry thought leader. Congratulations to the winning team.

In 2009 Ireland was devastated by the biggest world-wide depression since the Great Crash of 1929. It faced the prospect of the biggest emigration since the Great Famine of 1845. 

In 2010, Ireland was forced to stave off collapse by accepting on harsh terms a 67.5 billion-Euro loan from its Eurozone partners: In the next 3 years, spending by the Irish government declined by 15 %. 

The Industrial Development Authority of Ireland (IDA) and its PR agency, PadillaCRT, fought back in a years-long campaign. Determined to build on the economic “miracle” of the two decades before the 2008 depression, IDA and Padilla planned for 2013-14 a non-traditional media blitz featuring Barry O’Leary, CEO of IDA.

For this campaign, IDA and PadillaCRT have won the “Best Governmental/Public Affairs” category of PRDaily.com’s 2014 Media Relations Awards. 

Their impressive results:
• Ireland was the 1st country in Europe to exit the Eurozone bailout program in Dec. 2013
• IDA in 2013 kept its Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) up to 2011-2012 l levels, even though international trade went through a recession in 2013
• IDA Ireland set a record by attracting 164 new investment projects in 2013
• 59 companies already invested in Ireland expanded their Irish facilities in 2013
• For Irish investing, a big positive swing in media publicity from the previous 3 years 
• IDA execs wrote more than a dozen articles in top trade pubs: Industrial Engineering, Business Pansion Magazine, PharmaTech, and a regular column in the Huff Post 

Congratulations to Padilla CRT staffers John Scally, Laura Schultz and Kirsten Lesak-Greenberg, as well as IDA Ireland communications staffers Emmet Oliver, Kevin Sammon, Sinead Cullinan, Elaine Healy and Caitriona O’Kennedy! 
  

The International Justice Mission’s PR staff seized on the 2014 publication of IJM founder Gary Haugen’s book, The Locust Effect, as a way to spread word of its mission and accustom the well-educated, well-fed West to the notion that an end to hunger and ignorance in many countries will only come when their citizens are safe from rape, assault, robbery, and murder.

IJM’s PR staff promoted The Locust Effect and its seemingly paradoxical theme so well that IJM and the book reaped the incredible number of 6.3 billion gross media impressions around the world in 2014. For that heroic effort, and the equally epic results, IJM wins the Best Global Media Relations category of PR Daily’s 2014 Media Relations Awards.

The unexamined notion of tens of millions in the U.S. and Europe is, “The unfortunates in Borrioboola-Gha suffer from disease, malnutrition, and exploitation because they are poor and undereducated.”

Haugen and IJM reply, “No, these poor do not stay poor because of a lack of education. They are underfed and untaught because there is nothing standing between them and the criminals who enslave, terrorize, and kill them. They must be protected from crime first. It is as basic a human need as the need for food, warmth, and clean water.”

How to bring adequate policing to daily victims of horrible crimes? IJM and Haugen clearly believe that nationals on the scene must protect the law-abiding and bring malefactors to justice themselves. Ninety-five percent of IJM’s 600 staffers in the developing world are citizens of the nations they serve.

These are new, unfamiliar, perhaps uncomfortable ideas to many in “advanced” countries. Despite their amazing success, members of the IJM team have a difficult job ahead. Here’s how they went about it last year:
• Within six months, media impressions of coverage mentioning The Locust Effect topped 1.3 billion, half of them placed outside the U.S.
• Media coverage came from BBC News, Forbes, U.S. News & World Report, David Brooks in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Yahoo News, and “The Today Show.”
• The Locust Effect was endorsed by Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, and Tim Keller.
• IJM’s promos on its social media channels reached 305 million with #LocustEffect and drew 24,000 tweets, almost 8,000 likes, and 2,500 shares.
• IJM’s YouTube video about The Locust Effect got more than 142,000 views.

The results of this unremitting hard work were equally impressive:
• Within six months, 21,000 copies of The Locust Effect were sold.
• The book sold out on Amazon.
• The Locust Effect made #8 on The Washington Post’s best-seller list, and #11 on Amazon’s Best Books of the Year So Far 2014: Nonfiction.
• Haugen was invited to speak at Google.
• Haugen attended the World Economic Forum and Constituents Meeting in Geneva in August 2014.

Well-earned plaudits go to IJM staff members Sheeba Philip, Mindy Mizell, Ed Downing, Austin Graff, Kay Anuluoha, Vera Leung, Lori Poer, Michele Quiles, Sanjay Sojwal, Holly Burkhalter, Lacey Hanson, Karen Barnes and, of course, the founder of IJM, Gary Haugen.

Many people know the work of the World Wildlife Fund and instantly recognize its panda icon.

But how many people know the name Carter Roberts?

Well, after a highly successful campaign, Roberts is far more recognizable as the organization’s president and chief executive officer. After all, his name and picture have been featured by news outlets such as Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and CNN.com, to name just a few.

The campaign raised Roberts’ profile and garnered the top spot in the Best Executive Visibility category of PR Daily’s 2014 Media Relations Awards. 

The WWF reports that Roberts’ media presence jumped 22 percent (from 867 placements to 1,060) from fiscal year 2013 to fiscal year 2014, based on Vocus data. 

It’s not only news media outlets that are paying attention. Last September, Roberts was appointed by the White House to the Advisory Council on Wildlife Trafficking. Since then, the World Wildlife Fund tells us, he has been working to help craft and deliver the first-ever National Strategy for Combating Wildlife Trafficking.

Some of Roberts’ other writings have served to elevate his expertise and the organization’s mission. He commented on The Huffington Post about the United States’ removing the bald eagle from the endangered species list. He also wrote a post on the Foreign Affairs website about Earth Overshoot Day in August 2014, discussing the need for global sustainability cooperation.  

We congratulate Sarah Fogel, Steve Ertel, and Carter Roberts himself for their efforts to raise the CEO’s profile, spread the word about protecting wildlife, and preserve endangered species around the world. 

In 2013 Foster Farms became the first major U.S. poultry producer to earn American Humane Association certification, committing the poultry producer to independent audits of living conditions, diet and behaviors, and transport and processing.

This made humanely raised/processed chicken widely available to West Coast consumers at major retailers such as Safeway, Costco, and Walmart.

In getting out the word—and scoring positive coverage for an often-controversial industry— Fineman PR wins the gold for Best Brand Messaging or Positioning in PR Daily’s 2014 Media Relations Awards.

“Before Foster Farms’ AHA certification, humane certification was limited to niche products at specialty retailers like Whole Foods,” Fineman reports. “As a top-10 U.S. poultry brand, Foster Farms wished to differentiate itself, raising the bar for the entire industry.”

It started with good, solid data. At Fineman’s suggestion, Foster Farms began by hiring a research firm to survey the public on their perceptions of how food animals are raised. Fineman also audited news coverage of humane issues to better understand the challenges they faced and develop a list of media influencers—and potential detractors.

Foster Farms sought to pre-empt consumer and media skepticism by showing what it takes to raise chickens humanely. The company announced its AHA certification program in the dedication of the Foster Farms Poultry Education and Research Facility at Fresno State University, the nation’s first collegiate poultry program to earn humane certification.

Three days before announcing the program, Fineman gave the San Francisco Chronicle advance access to cover the AHA certification audit at the facility at Fresno State, allowing interviews with AHA and Foster Farms representatives. The PR firm also developed multiple news hooks for each target media market and arranged events to maximize coverage there.

The rollout continued with a “humane road show” in seven key West Coast media markets, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle. This featured a mobile exhibit and AHA’s 82-foot Red Star Rescue Rig, which has saved more than 70,000 animals from disasters over the previous five years.

Following the road show, Fineman arranged a “culinary media tour” to Los Angeles, Seattle, and Portland by TV Chef Aida Mollenkamp (Food Network and Food Channel), who gave viewers tips on how to create a “humane table.” 

The two audiences at which Indiana University Health’s “I Am Stronger” campaign was targeted couldn’t have been more different. 

First, there were physicians, upon whom the organization depends to deliver care to patients. And there were the patients themselves, consumers living in the system’s service area. 

It was the campaign’s goal to ensure these individuals saw IU Health as home to the state’s most skilled physicians, putting it in a position to provide great care to the sick and injured but also the kind of services one needs to stay healthy and well.
 
The multichannel campaign used the most traditional elements, including ultra-brief but compelling TV ads, print placements, banner ads, and rich media content for websites. The campaign also embraced mobile, placing ads with popular apps like The Weather Channel and The Onion, a tap-through of which led to the campaign’s well-executed mobile site. Given the increased adoption of mobile (which recently and for the first time accounted for more than half of all online access), the inclusion of a mobile component was unique among entrants in this category—and it was an inspired decision. 

The campaign certainly had an impact, driving some 90,000 page views to landing pages created specifically for the effort. The team recorded high levels of engagement with the content on the pages. From a metrics standpoint, the campaign either achieved or surpassed brand equity audit measurement goals. 

For all of these reasons, the campaign wins top honors in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards as the winner of the Grand Prize: Health Care PR and Marketing Campaign of the Year.

All in all, it was a job terrifically done by the Indiana University Health brand marketing team including Mike Yost, David Mangan and Kara Anderson, as well as, Kellie Bliss, Jenn Trusco, Megan Finkelman, Kristina Musial, Ali Rieck, Beth Doshan, Erin McGarry, Tony Bonilla, Eric Oken, Dan Finch, Val Enzenbacher, Dan Boehne, Susanne Michalek, and Adam McCrimmon and the folks at HY Connect. 

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

Communications hiring is too often a matter of filling a title, not ensuring that the team has the right skills to execute toward the strategy it is expected to support. 

At Blanchard Valley Health System in Northwestern Ohio, the comms department focused on the individual skills each team member brought to the mix, not only to perform their own work but also to support one another. 

The team of six—director, corporate communicator, event specialist, job intake coordinator/designer, graphic designer, and print shop coordinator—fulfilled all the work required of it while simultaneously evaluating its tools and processes, resulting in the implementation of two new programs. First, the team adopted a set of analytics tools to help select and create its marketing campaigns. The application of the Crimson Market Advantage software also uncovered a gap in the team’s efforts: There was no focus on direct-to-physician communication. 

The recognition of this missing piece and the numbers to back it up led to the decision to add a dedicated physician liaison. While undergoing the analysis of its tools and processes, the team delivered exceptional communication efforts, from a comprehensive multichannel marketing campaign to an internal safety awareness video to redesigned patient admission packets. The team’s focus on outcomes helped boost open rates on the hospital’s newsletter to an impressive 55 to 75 percent and doubled the number of Facebook fans and YouTube video views. 

This coordinated team effort, grounded firmly in sound communication strategy and execution, made it easy to select the team of Amy Leach, Amy Jordan, Megan James, Abby Hartman, Mindy Radabaugh, and Brian Radar at Blanchard Valley Health System as the winner of the Best Health Care Communications Team category in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

A lot of communications agencies talk about content, and may even do a great job at producing content while also engaging in media pitching and other traditional PR tactics. 

After 15 years in that game, MediaSource opted to drop everything except brand journalism-style content and media relations and go all-in with brand journalism, which brings journalistic skills and sensibilities to an organization’s effort to cover itself.

As mainstream media decline in their ability to serve as effective channels to reach hospitals’ audiences, helping health care organizations adopt a brand journalism approach became MediaSource’s mission. It’s one that the agency executed brilliantly. Working with Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, MediaSource was able to lead a shift away from scheduled multimedia news releases to a steady flow of more timely articles, multimedia stories and other content that amplified the hospitals’ exposure by putting more content in front of a larger audience with greater frequency. For Wexner, the effort resulted in exposure of its messages to 3.9 billion people; Nationwide Children’s did nearly as well, with exposure to 3.4 billion, the most either institution had ever experienced. 

And just as Coca-Cola’s trendsetting brand journalism has produced important third-party media coverage, MediaSource’s work has had the same effect, generating coverage in important outlets like “NBC Nightly News,” “The Today Show,” “CBS This Morning,” CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, “Dateline,” “ABC World News Tonight,” and a host of others. In fact, the effort blew away expectations for each of its goals: boosting clients’ reputations through top-tier national media coverage, driving patient volume by exposure to messages in key markets, and maximizing content across multiple channels to amplify the hospitals’ messages and reach. We proudly announce MediaSource the winner of the Best Health Care Agency category in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

We congratulate Lisa Arledge Powell, Clark Powell, Shannon McCormick, Kevin Volz, Robert Leitch, Jerred Ziegler, Tyler Davis, Mike Polk, Colleen O’Morrow, and Rocky Sanguinetti for their outstanding work.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.

American Express targets small-business owners with its content portal. Adobe goes after chief marketing officers. Adopting a similar approach to provide high-level content to chief medical officers is the strategy behind CMOSpark.

CMOSpark recognizes the limited time available to chief medical officers and presents a digestible number of articles and other content—including a podcast—designed to meet the knowledge and information needs CMOs face. 

For its content, Optum turned to its own internal physicians to serve as subject matter experts and thought leaders, crafting material addressing issues like population health, provider delivery systems, and considerations for evaluating products. The site design is clean, simple, and inviting, and the tagline—Thought Leadership for the Evolving Chief Medical Officer—is almost a gauntlet for the target audience. After all, what CMO doesn’t want to evolve? The content is not only well-presented, but uses real-world case studies and examples rather than being theoretical. For these reasons, Optum takes home the prize for Best Website in Ragan’s 2014 Health Care PR and Marketing Awards.

The campaign to attract readers from within the desired demographic was also well-executed, combining email outreach with strategically placed ads, resulting in 175 initial subscriptions to the email updates to the site, which generate a whopping 65 percent open rate. These early results for a smartly built site have led to additional investment in the site, which was created for a fraction of the amount companies routinely invest in similar properties.

Want to get recognized for your hard work? Find out about Ragan and PR Daily’s award programs here: http://www.ragan.com/Awards/RaganAwardsPrograms.aspx.