Veterans of Foreign Wars

Challenge

Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States is the nation’s oldest and largest veterans service organization and is dedicated to veterans’ service, legislative advocacy and military and community service programs. VFW is pursuing a long-term initiative to evolve the awareness and perception of the organization to better align with what it is today by highlighting veterans who are #StillServing after active duty, using diverse voices to illustrate the relevance of today’s VFW, its Posts and to encourage membership interest. It was looking to an earned media component to coordinate with efforts in other communication channels to achieve a measurable growth in awareness and correction in perception.

Solution

The Sturges Word team developed a strategic earned media plan to complement the campaign’s other paid, shared and owned communications initiatives. To execute the plan SWC:

• Completed a media analysis and discovered that zero percent of current coverage conveyed the desired messaging or image.
• Developed new messaging to reflect the organization as it exists today.
• Worked with VFW to identify potential spokespersons.
• Reviewed hundreds of veteran-submitted stories of community service, interviewed candidates and identified stories that would resonate with media and reinforce campaign messaging and image.
• Condensed stories of veterans’ community service after active duty into brief, compelling media pitches with accompanying data, visuals, videos and website links.
• Targeted media outlets to reach the desired demographic and reached out to hand-picked contacts with a customized pitch.
• Secured, tracked and analyzed media placements across the country.
• Worked with partner agency to ensure media coverage was leveraged into additional channels such as social, websites and email.

Results

MEDIA RELATIONS