HAAM PR Planbook

EXECUTIVE

summary Health Alliance for Austin Musicians is an Austin based nonprofit organization that provides local musicians with basic healthcare services while focusing on prevention and wellness. FURR’s goal for this semester long campaign is to increase awareness, participation, donations and volunteers among students at The University of Texas at Austin.

HAAM relies heavily on large donations from businesses as well as support from affiliate service providers, however, by increase student involvement HAAM can bring in more money to support it’s cause and increase economic support. HAAM will engage with students by targeting them directly on campus through guest speakers at various organizations on campus as well as communicating with student greek chapters for possible

philanthropic donations or support.

The average age demographic for college students at UT is between the ages of 18-22 with a majority being heavily active on social media networks and obtaining news and information online. HAAM will increase online conversations with their target emphasizing the #HAAM hashtag, writing intriguing blog entries, along with 30 second video promotions to increase awareness and curiosity.

Austin is a city that thrives on live music and music lovers are always searching for the next free show they can attend. HAAM will provide updates and information about music events by reaching out to print, radio and other media outlets across the UT campus. FURR will provide media kits to student newspapers and magazines to

promote the HAAM logo and keep students well informed. FURR suggests a public relations intern be hired or partnering with Texas Tower PR to manage these efforts.

FURR believes this public relations strategy will help HAAM become more prevalent among students at UT and to get students thinking more about the musician behind the music.

MEET THE

FURR PR TEAM

Elizabeth Rubio is a junior public relations and American studies major at the University of Texas at Austin. She was recently elected as the Financial Director for Communication Council.

She also serves as an account associate for Texas Tower PR. What she likes most about the Austin music scene is the amazing opportunity to almost always have access to wonderful live music performance.

Hugo Rojo is a sophomore pursuing a degree in public relations at the University of Texas at Austin. Always up for a good time, he enjoys Austin’s diverse and usually cost-effective music scene. When not soaking in the sun at ACL or performing press duties at SXSW Film, Hugo’s involved in Communication Council, the College of Communication’s official student governing body.

He is also the Director of Texas Tower PR, the University’s only studentrun PR agency.

Lauryn Feil is a junior public relations major also pursuing the Business Foundations Certificate.

She loves all the music festivals Austin is home to.

She always enjoys a live performance at any of the city’s lively restaurants and bars. Lauryn maintains an active campus life by being a member of Texas Lassos, one of the University’s top female spirit groups. As a member, she increases morale at sporting events and also volunteers her time with local Austin charities.

Courtney Ursery is a junior public relations major with a concentration in francais. Her favorite colors are black and black. The only thing she loves more than dogs is live music, which is why she loves Austin. She says that almost everywhere you go in Austin one can find live music (and dogs). She also says that the greatest thing about Austin is that there’s something for everyone.

Look out for her at the next live electronic show, she’ll be the one dancing in front with a braid wrapped around her head.

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Situational Analysis

Strategies + Messages

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A bit about the alliance and what they do for Austin

What We Learned

Interview, survey recap and feedback to guide us

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Building A SWOT

Identifying your strengths, Weaknesses, opportunities and threats

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Audience

Who are we talking to?

Who are we trying to reach?

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Goals + Objectives Here’s what we can do for you. Let’s celebrate your success.

Here’s what we’re gonna say and how we’re gonna say it

Tactics + Channels Here’s how we’ll make HAAM’s voice different from all the others

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Show Me The Green

We’re all about saving you money and bringing the best options to the table

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Save The Date

We lay out our strategic plan month-by-month

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Evaluation

Here’s how we’ll measure our success

2 Austin is the “Live Music Capital of the World,” yet many professional musicians are self-employed and rarely have access to health insurance and cannot afford preventive health care, including primary medical care, basic dental services and mental health counseling.

Health Alliance for Austin Musicians (HAAM) provides affordable health care access for Austin’s low-income, uninsured working musicians, with a focus on prevention and wellness.

By resolving challenges such as neglected teeth, hearing loss, heart problems and depression, HAAM and its partners help to improve musicians’ health.

SIMS Foundation provides access to financial support for mental health and addiction recovery services for Austin-area musicians and their families.

Seton Healthcare Family provides primary medical care through Seton Community Health Centers, established to offer health care and social services to working and uninsured families in Central Texas.

St. David’s Foundation in partnership with Capital Area Dental Foundation provide a network of dentists who work together to provide essential dental care to people who need it the most.

Estes Audiology Hearing Centers provides HAAM members with affordable comprehensive testing, education and custom earplugs.

Prevent Blindness Texas provide HAAM members with vision screening services and gift certificates for full eye exams and glasses through the VSP Mobile Eyes Program.

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WHAT WE

LEARNED Interview + Primary Research HAAM has the potential to expand and improve their current public relations and engagement plan.

They successfully reach out to businesses for support and maintain great relationships with affiliate service providers. Since Austin is a college town they want to focus on getting the younger demographic involved.

Word of mouth is the primary source of charity awareness. HAAM wants to get people talking, increase the awareness of their mission and what they are doing to help members of the community and the Austin economy. Carolyn Schwarz, executive director of HAAM, expressed that she wants to engage the college community to get them thinking about the person behind the music.

Raising awareness about HAAM Benefit Day and how students can get involved is our campaign focus. Consistently monitoring and updating social media forums such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram can make HAAM content more relevant to college students. As well as Reaching out to the student organizations that dedicated their time to serving the Austin community can also raise awareness and get students involved.

Survey + Feedback A survey was given to college students asking on a scale of 1-10 how likely they were to donate $1 to HAAM, 1-3 being not likely, 4-7 being maybe, 8-10 being very likely.

Out of 46 respondents 41% said they might donate and 45% said they were very likely to donate.

The survey also asked what they would need to know about HAAM before they felt ready to donate.

Majority said they would want to know where their money would be going. They’d like to see more stories about musicians who are benefiting from their donations or how many musicians in the city are being helped and how big of an impact HAAM is making on their lives. Other insights gathered from the survey include informing college students about the best way to donate, what events they can attend to donate, and keeping them informed about the services HAAM is providing and how musicians are served with their donations.

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SECONDARY

RESEARCH More than two thirds of all charitable donations in the U.S. come from individuals so it is important to make efforts to engage with individuals who are likely to donate to a cause they find important. A majority of donors agree that is important to stay well-informed. This indicates that charities should take steps to ensure that their donors are told what proportion of donations go to benefit people or the economy, what specific projects the organization is involved in and the type of projects they would like to become involved in. It is important that charities develop and maintain spaces on social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr and even the business networking site, LinkedIn. Encouraging current donors to communicate with charities could serve to raise awareness of the

organization and foster brand trust within those networks. The emotional benefit of donating is a primary driver of giving, therefore videos of how individuals are being helped can also be an effective and entertaining way to keep donors informed. Combining videos with statistics could also have especially high appeal to the welleducated donors that tend to give the largest donations.

Source: Mintel, Charities of Choice

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BUILDING YOUR

SWOT ANALYSIS Strengths - Unique mission, stands out - Local, relevant to Austin citizens - Fun events - Easy to donate and contribute

Weaknesses - Small staff, not well-known - Hard to volunteer for - Nothing in place to reach out to college students - Minimal media coverage and advertising.

Opportunities

Threats

- Expanding social media to build communities and get donors to communicate to provide more online buzz and word of mouth conversations - Targeting music lovers, targeting students involved on campus

- Competition with other local nonprofits - Austin hosts big nonprofit events every week, possibility that HAAM could get lost in the clutter

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WHO ARE OUR

AUDIENCES? Helping Hand Meet Rachel. She is a freshman Alpha Epsilon Phi. She is from a small town in Texas but already considers Austin her home. What she loves most about this great city – other than her sorority sister and UTAustin sports programs – is the live music scene.

Rachel’s hometown lacked a variety of live music events, so she takes advantage of the fact that Austin is the “Live Music Capital of the World.” She loves attending concerts with her sisters and wants to help implement more live music act on campus and at her sorority.

Loving Longhorn This is Corey. A senior in communications, he’s also a Texas Wrangler member. He loves UT as much as he loves how good the cowboy hat looks on him. He never misses a football game and would rather die than give up his chestpainting role at basketball games. He’s involved at the university and spends a lot of his free time on campus. Despite Corey’s spirit group persona, he has a giving heart and enjoys volunteering around the community that supports his beloved Longhorns. Corey donates his time and parents’ money to the causes he cares about most.

Benevolent Band Member Meet Anna. She’s a senior and member of UT’s Music and Entertainment Committee. She sings backup vocals in a band.

She has traveled the world once and plans to do it again. She has a few tattoos from abroad and many pictures. She is environmentally conscious and started a recycling project on campus. When she isn’t practicing or performing, Anna does whatever she can find in order to pay the rent. She even tries to spend her weekends giving singing lessons. But her primary focus is pursuing her music career. She goes to bars to watch and support her friends’ bands and is always up for happy hour.

Supportive Music Scene Bystander This is James. He loves being first to the latest trends and likes hunting for new music. He is in school majoring in political science and hopes to get a job in a city with a good music scene. His friends praise him for his great music taste and always ask for mix CDs. James spend his weekends at the church and helping the less fortunate. He likes seeing local artists perform and often goes to big weekend festivals during his free time.

Daniel is a sponge when it comes to music. He takes everything in and basks in what he thinks is the best gift to mankind – music.

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OUR GOALS AND

OBJECTIVES Awareness We plan to increase the awareness about HAAM amongst UT student organizations by 25% within the next year. This will be done by increasing HAAM’s presence on social media websites including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. FURR will work with HAAM to incorporate a bi-weekly blog focusing on a particular musician or any news regarding the organization. We also plan to have representatives from HAAM join a student organization speaker circuit to increase awareness.

Representatives from HAAM would also meet with Greek and spirit organization to promote themselves as a philanthropy opportunity.

Donations and Volunteers HAAM relies on monetary donations from the Austin community.

After students become more aware about what HAAM does for local musicians, they will feel more motivated to make a small donation. If we increase awareness with the UT student organization population, we can expect that at least a third to will make some sort of monetary donation. FURR also wants to increase the number of student volunteers for HAAM. Volunteers would be able to assist HAAM during special events, but also fulfilling daily public relations tasks, such as the suggested biweekly blog. Student organization could make volunteering for HAAM a philanthropy project that requires members to participate.

Participation Benefit Day is HAAM’s biggest event of the year. It takes place each year around the entire Austin community. Participating local companies donate 5% of the day’s proceeds to HAAM. Over 200 musicians perform for free in Austin during a twenty-four hour period. Once students are made aware of HAAM and know what they do for Austin musicians, they will want to participate in the event.

We plan to increase participation amongst UT students on Benefit Day by 25%.

By simply eating, shopping, and enjoying live music, participating UT

students will be helping provide better health care services for local musicians.

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STRATEGIES AND

MESSAGES Engage, activate college students at the University of Texas at Austin This audience is active in the Austin music scene. They’re a hearty portion of the Austin City Limits Festival and SXSW experience.

College students are also the most passionate audience for charities, philanthropies and nonprofits.

With participation in student organizations, most of them have already been exposed to giving to the greater good.

Let’s Keep The Music Playing The title of our plan book is also one of the messages of our campaign.

We believe that Health Alliance for Austin Musicians keeps the music playing in our beautiful city.

Through this message we can synergize our target audience of college students with your organizations focus on wellness and prevention.

What will your dollar do?

The number approach is the most effective when communicating and establishing a relationship with college students. They’re on the go with social activities and maintaining a full course load.

Seeing the numbers and statistics behind HAAM’s success and pivotal role in the city and music industry will spark interest.

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TACTICS AND

CHANNELS Social Media Campaigns Partnering with the Dean of Students, University Unions and other large student-oriented social media accounts, we will promote the organization through the #HAAM hashtag. This will generate buzz around who they are as a nonprofit and created an Austin Twitter trend.

Speaker Circuit HAAMbassadors will visit student organizations to talk about volunteer opportunities. Speaking opportunities allow HAAM to engage face-to-face with our target market and humanizes the organization. This is also the ideal setting for showing short promotional and informational videos.

Video Promotions Effective videos are key in 21st century storytelling. 30-second promotional videos featuring musicians and stakeholders will be produced as another communication channel. Bits from events and shows can be incorporated into longer videos that explain the organization’s mission.

Strong Blog, Strong Results Cohesive blog entries will synergize the “What Will Your Dollar Do?” and “Keep the Music Playing” campaigns into a unified front.

The public wants to know how they can help HAAM and how their donations directly impact the quality of musician’s lives.

Ready, Set, Pitch!

Reinforcing our commitment to effectively communicating with college students, we’ll be getting HAAM’s name in print, radio and video media outlets across the University of Texas at Austin’s campus. Press kits will be sent to The Daily Texan, KUT, Texas Student Television and its subsidiaries, The Horn, Study Breaks Magazine, Orange Magazine and Longhorn Life Magazine. Press kits will include a fact sheet on HAAM, a detailed calendar with upcoming events, a USB drive with high-quality photos and videos from events and a copy of the organization’s annual report.

The materials will be branded with our client’s logo and heavily feature, incorporate and push our social media presence.

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WHAT IS OUR

budget?

Scenario One Hire a public relations intern to assist in communications and engagement efforts. At a competitive $9/hour salary, an intern can work two hours a day, for three days over a span of 17 weeks.

This makes the overall allotted budget for the intern’s payroll $1, 530.

Scenario Two Partner with Texas Tower PR, the University’s public relations agency specializing in nonprofits. They use a $10 semesterly fee to cover their operational cost. The agency can cover nearly all of the itemized goals, strategies and objectives depicted in this planbook.

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WHAT IS OUR

timeline?

September Students are back in school and full of energy. An outlet for this energy is extracurricular activities.

HAAM will kick off its speak circuit by visiting the UT campus and engaging with students.

The press kit will begin to be assembled for an October distribution.

Blog editorial calendar is created and filled with dates for the rest of the year.

October Speaker circuit continues and press kits are sent out. PR intern begins to foster relationship between HAAM and media.

Student organizations are involved in crafting a social media calendar where periodic mentions of

HAAM will be scheduled. These will span over several weeks, carrying HAAM’s Twitter presence throughout the end of the year.

November Speaker circuit takes a break during Thanksgiving as students have a period of inactivity. Pitches about HAAM “giving back” to the general and music communities are sent to niche media outlets. Holiday blog posts and social media content are readied.

December This month concludes a successful trial run of our blog editorial calendar and we measure how effective our entries where in garnering readers. Holiday themed social media strategies are implemented.

HERE IS OUR

EVALUATION Measuring Success We will evaluate the effectiveness of our public relations plan by monitoring the quantitative increase in social media interactions such as Facebook likes, Twitter retweets, replies and mentions. We will also analyze how well we implemented our plan based on the monetary gain HAAM experienced during the time in which we worked with them. Furthermore, we will determine the success of our work by comparing the numbers from last year’s Benefit Day to the attendance at this year’s events.

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