Helping Our Nation’s Businesses Prepare for and Recover from the Unexpected
Situation
In 2004, the U. S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), with help from The Advertising Council, began educating businesses about the importance of having an emergency preparedness plan.
This campaign, “Ready Business,” was successful in raising awareness within the target audience, and the DHS wanted to continue the momentum by encouraging businesses to actually start or update a plan with help from ready.gov, a Web site full of emergency planning advice.
So the Ad Council, working on behalf of the DHS, tapped Slack Barshinger for our expertise in small business marketing.
Marketing Challenge
Most small- to medium-sized businesses know that they need an emergency preparedness plan, but they also feel that planning takes too much time, money and resources. The campaign needed to directly address these misperceptions and position ready.gov as the ultimate source for emergency planning resources, checklists and templates.
Solution
We developed several different concepts to educate our audiences and drive traffic to ready.gov. But before we made our recommendation, we conducted focus groups to test which concept would be most effective.
The concept we moved forward with empathizes with the hard work that our audiences put into building a business or workplace – and how important it is to protect that effort with a plan. Each ad highlights “experience lines” earned through specific accomplishments. Short, info-rich copy educates the reader as to how easy and affordable it can be to protect one’s workplace – with help from ready.gov.
Outcome
In order to reach as many small- and medium-sized businesses as possible, our media department leveraged its relationships with more than 100 respected b-to-b publications all over the country. We negotiated and received commitments for more than $1.5 million worth of media placements, including print and online spots. Currently, we are developing placements for alternate media channels, such as airport signage, outdoor and trade shows.
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