Full Strategic Plan and Results Report
Measurable Goals
The goal of this media relations project was to bring in-depth public awareness to the many lifesaving duties performed by MU Health Care’s helicopter service, Staff for Life. Since 1982, the Staff for Life team has served Missourians by caring for the most critically ill and injured children and adults. Staff for Life managers contacted the Public Relations team with the request to help them publicly celebrate their 35th anniversary in a big way — with no budget. The goal was to communicate the 35th anniversary celebration of their lifesaving work using innovative earned-media tactics.
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Statement of Opportunity
During a brainstorming session between the PR team and the Staff for Life manager, PR shared that one of the most common requests the media relations team receives from reporters is to tour the Staff for Life helicopter and do a “day in the life” story about what it’s like to save lives in the air. The idea formed – if reporters were invited to tour the helicopter, interview the flight paramedics and helicopter pilot, and offered a chance to experience a short flight, we would likely earn positive, meaningful stories across many news outlets. A Staff for Life media day plan was created, requiring the cooperation of multiple employees across both the PR and Staff for Life teams. Additionally, the PR team suggested MU Health Care’s PR photographer use a new 360° video camera during a flight to create an immersive video that could be shared on social media channels. In this way, the Staff for Life stories would be distributed by both news outlets and MU Health Care’s web and social media platforms.
Project Implementation
The PR team called each local television station, radio station and newspaper to personally offer a journalist from each outlet the opportunity to schedule a one-hour time slot during the Staff for Life media day. It was explained that this media event would be part of the service’s 35th anniversary celebration. The PR team explained that each reporter would get one-on-one interviews with the Staff for Life helicopter pilot, a flight paramedic and a flight nurse. Reporters were also offered a guided tour through the specially equipped medical helicopter and a brief flight over Columbia, during which they could take photos and video of their experience. Reporters from all three major television networks, both local papers and one radio news station signed up for the media day. PR and the Staff for Life managers worked to identify the best spokespeople for the interviews/tours/flights. Our PR and Staff for Life teams worked to ensure we could provide a block of time long enough to accommodate each reporter and developed a contingency plan in case the Staff for Life team got called to respond to an emergency. On the day of the event, two PR team members escorted each reporter to the Staff for Life staging area where they were prepared for the flight. One PR member escorted the reporter engaging in the interviews while the second PR team member waited for the next reporter to arrive.
Additionally, the PR team photographer did interviews and a tour/flight with the 360° camera to produce an immersive social media story. We planned to release this social media video several weeks after the media tour to increase our overall exposure on multiple platforms.
Results and Evaluation
Due to the unique media relations efforts, the Staff for Life team was featured in two television news pieces that lasted several minutes each. They were featured in a local newspaper story that started on the front page and covered an entire page on the inside, including several beautiful color photos. Staff for Life was featured in a long-form story on the area’s top news-radio station. Another added value was each news story also had a prominent web presence on the news outlets’ websites.
KOMU: http://www.komu.com/news/mu-health-care-commemorates-35-years-of-soaring-high-to-save-lives
KFRU: https://audioboom.com/posts/6602912-mu-health-care-staff-for-life-helicopter-kyle-rehagen
Columbia Missourian:
Written story: https://www.columbiamissourian.com/news/local/staff-for-life-soars-into-its-th-year/article_f514d838-c33d-11e7-8a14-c7df694982d7.html
We released the 360° video tour on the MU Health Care Facebook page to further communicate the full scope of the Staff for Life service. The video received more than 26,000 views, 307 likes and was shared 378 times in less than two weeks.
360° Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1ilDP5WvpE
The video on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/muhealthcare/videos/10155123389967647/
Reporters rarely cover “anniversary” events and when they do, the stories are usually very brief. We found that when we thought more creatively, we could generate in-depth, positive coverage for television, radio and print. Due to the success of the media-day program, we are currently working on a similar program to help our EMS services celebrate their 50th anniversary this summer.