Case Study Series: Women Executive Leadership (WEL)

Industry

Non-Profit Trade/Professional Organizations

Scope

Public Relations and Website Development

Results

WEL’s primary mission is to advocate, educate and connect accomplished women with the goal of increasing the number of women serving on Corporate Boards and in Executive Suites.

In 2009, Merit Mile was tasked with promoting their signature event, Corporate Salute, over an eight-week period. Despite the holiday season obstacles, Merit Mile secured secured 17 print / broadcast / internet interviews for WEL.

Nine of 17 were high-reach television hits that generated 2,250,000 impressions. According to the Bacon’s Media Database Advertising Equivalency Metric, this equated to $140,000 in paid advertising. In terms of ROI this amounted to a $13 return in awareness for each dollar invested by the client throughout 2009.

Merit Mile then leveraged the TV interview successes to raise awareness, memberships and corporate sponsorships for WEL. This began by providing the organization’s leadership with media training and coaching to improve their on-air “presence” and interviewing skills.

Subsequently, we then arranged several recording sessions with prominent broadcast personalities. This resulted in four TV interviews, including “News & Views” on CBS 4 and “Comcast Newsmakers,” both featuring WEL’s president; “South Florida Today” on NBC 6 with two WEL board members; and “Eye on South Florida” on Fox 29 with one WEL board member. Of course, we captured and published these hits within the “News” section of the WEL website.

Concurrent with these activities, Merit Mile undertook a complete redesign and upgrade of the WEL website, including new programming, added functionality, fresh copy and many new features—all on a very limited budget and all subject to the approval of 14 WEL directors.

Site enhancements now include a complete content management system, e-commerce functionality, a dynamic calendar, and YouTube video integration.

We believe the new web presences for WEL sets the best-in-class benchmark for NPO sites worldwide. In the opinion of Diana Harville, a WEL director and chairwoman of the communications committee, “The new site has an elevated, Fortune 500 look and feel, offers us complete management flexibility, and positions WEL for new phases of growth.”