Introduction

Getting college students to care about a sick little girl is one thing, but how do you get them

to take life-saving action three times a day? Every day? For an entire month? That was the

challenge faced by Cardinal PR, SUNY Plattsburgh’s student-run public relations agency

when they agreed to help Hannah’s Hope Fund win a $250,000 Pepsi Refresh Project grant.

Situation Analysis

Hannah’s Hope Fund was established when parents Matt and Lori Sames refused to give up

hope that their 4-year old daughter Hannah would die from a neurological disorder called

Giant Axonal Neuropathy or GAN. Hannah’s Hope Fund is a grass-roots, 501(c)3 non profit

organization with no paid staff. Its mission is to raise funds for research that will lead to a

treatment stopping this horrible disease in its tracks before it’s too late for Hannah and a

handful of others like her. Unlike childhood cancers or other terminal diseases, GAN is

considered an orphaned disease because it afflicts so few children that it’s not worth the

resources for medical research companies. Simply put, projected profits aren’t sufficient to

justify medical research.

Children with GAN are born and develop normally until they begin experiencing neurological

problems, usually with their feet, between 2-4 years of age. From there, GAN is similar to

other neurological disorders such as ALS. Slowly, these children are robbed of the ability to

walk, eat and eventually breathe by their mid-20s.

In just over two years, Hannah’s Hope Fund had raised close to $2 million for medical

research studies and was trying to secure additional funding for FDA clinical trials and

approval. For a small organization run by no one other than immediate family and friends,

this feat seemed insurmountable, until Pepsi created a social media based CSR program

called the Pepsi Refresh Project. Hannah’s Hope Fund had already trumped an August win,

beating out national health agencies with huge staffs and budgets to win its first $250,000

Pepsi Refresh grant. However, the medical team still needed to be paid to continue its

research and the approaching FDA studies would be costly. Attempting a second $250,000

Pepsi Refresh Project grant was unthinkable…or was it?

In the fall of 2010 that is exactly what SUNY Plattsburgh’s Cardinal Public Relations

(Cardinal PR) agreed to when they took on Hannah’s Hope Fund as an academic service-

learning client.

The Challenge

As the new school year was approaching, the excitement was just quieting down that

Hannah’s Hope Fund had beaten out much larger, national organizations in the health

category of the Pepsi Refresh contest. The community and Hannah’s Hope volunteers were

exhausted from the month long quest to recruit on-line voters and mobile texters, and quite

simply everyone from Plattsburgh to Albany was sick of hearing about Hannah’s Hope.

Cardinal PR’s challenge was to energize and engage an entirely new audience for the

November Pepsi Refresh contest. A new group of social media savvy constituents was

needed, one that hadn’t consumed their lives in August voting for Hannah three times a

day… namely college students.

Hannah’s Hope Fund would prove to be challenging to the Cardinal PR team in more

than one way. The biggest challenge was also the first, explaining to our primary public

(college students) exactly what Giant Axonal Neuropathy or GAN is. The team did this by

starting a Facebook group to help spread awareness about the disease. All key messages

regarding the disease had to be short and easily read, because as we know college students

have the attention span of a tweet. The tactics would need to be short and sweet, the

posters and flyers would need colorful fonts with amusing pictures and innuendos such as

“Did you do it today?” referring to the text-to-vote method the Pepsi Refresh Project uses.

Cardinal PR’s tactics certainly did their job because the campaign led to a second win in the

December Pepsi Refresh Project for Hannah’s Hope Fund, earning them an additional

$250,000 to go along with the original grant from the August win to total a half million

dollars to fund GAN research.

Research

Research for this campaign relied primarily on secondary research.

GAN (Giant Axonal Neuropathy)

The secondary research began with understanding GAN. GAN is a disease that affects the

nervous system in one’s body. The disease usually starts in early childhood and worsens

with time, eventually shutting down the entire body.

Hannah Sames

To understand GAN further Cardinal PR met with Matt Sames, the father of Hannah who’s

namesake is Hannah’s Hope Fund. Hannah is a seven-year-old girl with kinky, curly blonde

hair and an energetic personality. When Hannah was four years old she was diagnosed with

GAN, the youngest child ever diagnosed with GAN.

ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)

GAN can be closely related to ALS. Cardinal PR thought it was important for its target

audiences to understand the connection between GAN and ALS because even those GAN is

extremely rare, a cure for GAN could eventually lead to a cure for ALS.

Target Audiences

College Students

High School Students

Primary Audience

SUNY Plattsburgh Students, Ages 18-24

Cardinal PR targeted the total student body of 5,859 students. Of the 5,859 students 57

percent are women while 43 percent are men. The student body is diverse with students

representing over 70 countries. The reason why we chose college students as a public was

because of their knowledge of social media and technology (25.8% of all Facebook users

are between 18 and 25 years old.)

Secondary Audience

Plattsburgh High School Students, Ages 14-18

Much like the SUNY Plattsburgh audience the high school audience is tech savvy and well

connected with social media making them a good target for the Pepsi Refresh Project.

Friends of SUNY Plattsburgh Students, Ages 18-24

We also reached out to friends of SUNY Plattsburgh students who attend other colleges and

universities primarily in New York State, but also around the country. Since college

students’ social media networks exist beyond the structural boundaries of Plattsburgh, we

engaged these existing relationships to help make Hannah’s Hope Fund go viral.

In addition, the education phase for this age group was quicker because we didn’t need to

spend the time explaining how to vote via text or Facebook, since college and high school

students were already adept with the technology.

Competing Factors Among Audiences

Like all college students, Plattsburgh students are targets for numerous social welfare

causes urging students for their support. During this semester just some of the competing

health organizations included: St. Jude’s Up Til’ Dawn, American Cancer Society’s Relay for

Life, and Colleges Against Cancer, which made it difficult to streamline attention to rally the

campus to support Hannah’s Hope.

Key Messages

Vote 3 Ways, every day to save Hannah!

Cardinal PR developed this slogan to influence and motivate the college audience to vote

three different ways everyday for the entire month of November to stay involved through

technology and social media.

Students could text vote, vote online through the Pepsi Refresh web page, and through the

Pepsi Facebook page.

You’re on Facebook and texting everyday anyway…and it doesn’t cost a cent.

We realized we weren’t asking students to do anything they weren’t already doing everyday

anyway. It would be easy to just take a minute while you’re already Facebooking or texting

to vote for Hannah…and besides, it’s free.

A Cure for GAN could lead to a cure for other diseases like ALS.

Cardinal PR thought it was important to inform the target audiences that discovering a cure

for GAN would not only help the small number of GAN sufferers, but the same research had

the potential to help cure other common neurological diseases as well.

Goal, Objectives, and Outcomes

Goal: To Have Hannah’s Hope Fund win the Pepsi Refresh 250K Grant for

November 2010.

Objective 1: To build a connection to Hannah’s Hope Fund among SUNY Plattsburgh and

local high school students during the Pepsi Refresh Contest throughout the month of

November.

Objective 2: To educate our audiences that their help finding a cure for the orphaned

disease GAN would cost them nothing except a few minutes of their time throughout the

month of November.

Objective 3: To motivate our audience to take action and vote all three ways, every day

during the Pepsi Refresh Contest throughout the month of November.

Strategy 1: Engage college and high school students via a social media campaign.

Rationale: While older social media audiences are growing, college and high school

students are still the largest audience for Facebook and have constant access to mobile

phones for texting.

Tactic 1: Develop a new Facebook page for Hannah’s Hope Fund and post current, regular

photos and updates about Hannah and other GAN children to make an emotional

connection with our audiences. Include information about the on-going medical research.

Provide direct links to the Pepsi websites for voting and detailed voting instructions for how

students can vote all three ways, every day.

Tactic 2: Produce, film and direct a video to post on YouTube and the Hannah’s Hope

Facebook page, as well as distribution via email and personal Facebook wall postings,

calling out to students to vote all three ways. The short film utilized campus opinion leaders

such as VP of Student Affairs, Bill Laundry, the Student Association president, and Greek

Life leaders.

Tactic 3: Create a Hannah’s Hope Twitter Account. Post daily comments and reminders on

Twitter to build a HHF Twitter following.

Outcomes: Over the course of the semester the Hannah’s Hope Fund Facebook

accumulated 4,408 fans. This tactic was our most valuable asset in the campaign. The

Hannah’s Hope Fund Facebook Page was also linked to the Twitter Page HH4GAN. This page

has accumulated 114 followers and played a role in spreading awareness about the

nonprofit. Our video was distributed to thousands of Facebook friends, email contacts and

on YouTube.

Strategy 2: Engage college and high school students via face to face personal encounters.

Rationale: We found that most college students were willing to help out, especially when

they realized how easy it was and we weren’t asking for a financial donation.

Tactic 1: Gave a short pitch and voting instructions at the premiere and all November

subsequent showings of the heavily anticipated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part

1 movie. Got audiences to vote on the spot and asked them to remember to vote daily until

the end of November.

Tactic 2: Tabled in the Angell College Center, urging students to vote on the spot, and

distributed educational quarter sheets on Hannah’s Hope and ways to vote in the Pepsi

Refresh contest. Engaged students by blowing bubbles, which are incorporated in the

Hannah’s Hope Fund logo.

Tactic 3: Distributed educational quarter sheets on Hannah’s Hope and ways to vote in the

Pepsi Refresh contest at all major collegiate sporting events including basketball and hockey

games. In addition to engaging sports fans 1:1, announcements were made over the

loudspeaker during halftime breaks.

Tactic 4: Tabled at Sunday brunch at SUNY Plattsburgh’s main dining hall, where all on-

campus students needed to eat on weekends. Requested students vote on the spot as they

were waiting to swipe in.

Tactic 5: With instructor approval, Cardinal PR students made announcements before or

after their classes reminding students to vote.

Tactic 6: Distributed educational quarter sheets on Hannah’s Hope and ways to vote in the

Pepsi Refresh contest urging students to vote on the spot in residence halls in the evenings.

Tactic 7: Distributed business cards with instructions on how and where to vote at the mall

food court on Black Friday, coffee shops, and to college-aged students while standing in line

for rides at Universal Studios and Disney World.

Outcome: We reached thousands of moviegoers awaiting the start of the latest Harry Potter

film at close to 20 showings. In addition, literally thousands of students were engaged in

brief 1:1 personal conversations over the course of the month.

Strategy 3: Design visual communication materials to remind students to vote daily.

Rationale: Since this contest depended on an engaged audience throughout the entire

month, it was difficult to maintain the enthusiasm and momentum. The campaign needed

to be sustained via numerous strategies throughout November.

Tactic 1: Developed screen savers placed on all college computers in the computer labs

with information on how and where to vote.

Tactic 2: Put up lawn signs around Plattsburgh with the Hannah’s Hope logo and website

reminding passersby to vote.

Tactic 3: Cardinal PR students wrote reminders to vote for Hannah and the text vote

number on white boards in lecture halls

Tactic 4: Created and hung humorous posters with sexual innuendos of students saying

how many times a day and where they “did it”.

Outcome: It’s difficult to calculate the value of these tactics. We did receive a number of

comments about the posters, but have no hard numbers to substantiate their value. The

best we can say is they were a part of a successful campaign.

Strategy 4: Engage college and high school students via a traditional media campaign.

Rationale: Although social media and face to face encounters are the primary means of

reaching our audiences, a small, traditional media campaign would also be helpful to

reinforce our messages throughout the month.

Tactic 1: Submitted press releases to the student-run newspaper, Cardinal Points, as well as

the local newspaper, The Press-Republican.

Tactic 2: Created and aired three radio PSAs that ran on the student radio station WQKE FM,

WOKO FM, and WIRY AM.

Outcome: Similar to the above tactics, it’s difficult to place a value on these tactics as well.

The local newspaper ran several articles, although the college newspaper decided not to run

the story. WOKO, the station with the largest listening audience in our area ran several PSAs

as did the local AM station and the college station. Again, the best we can say is they were a

part of a successful campaign.

Evaluation

Since this was a student-run campaign, by the time the end of the semester came,

students had dispersed for winter break. As such, no formal evaluation was completed.

Throughout the month of November Hannah’s Hope Fund was always in first or second

place in the running to secure one of the two grants. Over Thanksgiving break when SUNY

Plattsburgh (and SUNY Albany) students were on break, the campaign lost momentum and

votes. By the time students returned, November was over and Hannah’s Hope had slipped

to third place, just out of the winners circle. Additionally, there were some outside

contingencies that resulted in Pepsi evaluating and revising the entry and voting rules for

the contest as requested by Hannah’s Hope supporters. After frustration, tears and anger

from the Sames family, Cardinal PR students and all Hannah’s Hope supporters, Hannah’s

Hope summoned the energy to enter the December contest as well. This decision was

undeniably the right one and proved that the work done in November was irrefutable.

During the month of December as students continued the campaign amidst finals and the

holidays, Hannah’s Hope finally with success and secured a second $250,000 grant!

For Cardinal PR, the overall experience was a valued one. Throughout the campaign,

Cardinal PR learned many valuable lessons, such as dealing with clients, communicating

with fellow practitioners and maintaining a professional image. Having the chance to work

with an actual client and helping them achieve their goal was the most rewarding feeling

imaginable.