Tarrant County Blue
Public Relations
The Challenge
Tarrant County Blue is an organization in Fort Worth dedicated to providing a cash gift to each fallen officer’s family, and is not tied to anything except the community’s love and appreciation. When Fort Worth Police officer Brett Hull was killed in the line of duty, Cause Agents acted swiftly to send out a press announcement asking for the community to step up to the plate to donate to the fallen officer’s family. Because the news was just breaking, J.O. acted quickly to execute the release and the follow up plan. In our experience, we knew that if the breaking news of Hull’s death included a call to action for donations, there would be a better opportunity to gain more donations.
The Solution
In total, two press releases were distributed: one local and one national via PR Newswire. With both releases, we had very targeted customized pitches to reporters that were covering the fallen officers. The PR team also followed up with phone calls to all the reporters, and a verification email within 24 hours. The organization did not have their own social media outlets as a channel for communicating their efforts, so this was a down and dirty press relations effort on The Cause Agency’s part.
The Result
As for the media coverage, we utilized CoverageBook and Google Alerts to capture the covered media. The first press release received nine total pieces of coverage with more than 15,178,632 online readers with a true estimated 35,140 coverage views. It was also posted by third parties onto YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, totaling 629 impressions. The second press release via Newswire received 246 pieces of coverage with a potential 149,232,736 online audience and an estimated 904,227 views. It saw impressions on third party posts on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter 1,549 times!
Since TCA donated the professional services to the cause, our ROI was a loyal client. We came in under budget with the Newswire press release total of $1,300, thus producing an ROI of 5,284% from the $70,000 donation from more than 200 individuals and corporate donors that was received! On a side note, Mrs. Hull bought their daughters each a car with the funds to get them off to college.
2019 PRSA Worthy Award for Media Relations/News Release
2020 Gold Hermes Creative Award for 202. Pro Bono
