Announcing Children’s Hospital New Orleans new name during inaugural Louisiana Legacy during Super Bowl LIX week
Situation
For 70 years, Children’s Hospital New Orleans proudly served as Louisiana’s only, freestanding, comprehensive children’s hospital. In addition to comprehensive services offered at its main campus in New Orleans, the hospital operates a robust network of more than 30 satellite locations, pediatric affiliations across Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast and robust and long-standing community programs designed to meet the health needs of the diverse communities it serves.
With Super Bowl LIX coming to New Orleans, the hospital wanted to leverage the event by hosting an inaugural event called Louisiana Legacy that would serve to celebrate its milestone 70th anniversary, raise critical funds and recognize some of the hospital’s biggest supporters. Even more, the hospital would conclude the evening with a special announcement – a new name that honors a transformational partnership with one of the country’s most beloved football families, the Mannings (Archie, Cooper, Peyton, Eli and Arch).
Strategy
The Louisiana Legacy event included a patron party followed by a fireside chat with the Mannings (Archie, Olivia, Eli, Cooper) as well as Raising Canes Founder and CEO Tod Graves who donated $1 million to the hospital. The fireside chat was moderated by another New Orleans Saints legend, Deuce McAllister. The renaming announcement would be shared at the end of the fireside chat and would be followed with a hospital-wide celebration the following morning.
The first phase of the public relations strategy for this campaign was to announce the inaugural Louisiana Legacy event to generate awareness and promote ticket sales. Several pre-event interviews were secured with local New Orleans broadcast stations and Gambel Communications worked with hospital spokespersons to ensure key message delivery.
On the heels of the event announcement, Gambel Communications worked with the hospital, the Manning family publicists and representatives of Tod Graves team to embargo the renaming announcement with every major local media outlets who would physically attend Louisiana Legacy. The Times-Picayune was granted the only embargoed story which included interviews with the Manning family that published minutes after the announcement was made.
Once the local media were confirmed, Gambel Communications quickly pivoted to focus on national media. While Archie Manning and the rebrand remained the primary draw for local media, it was the presence of Todd Graves and the fireside chat with the Manning family that piqued the interest of national media the most.
With confirmations from two dozen media outlets, Gambel Communications determined the space previously identified for the post-announcement interviews would be too small and different space within the Super Bowl venue was selected.
During the Louisiana Legacy event, Gambel Communications greeted each member of the media when they arrived, issued press credentials and went over the run of show. Each member of the media was assigned a communications liaison for the evening, a requirement of the Manning’s security team to ensure no member of the family was approached during the event. As the patron party and fireside chat took place, Gambel Communications set up the press conference space which doubled as a prep space prior to the event. Once the fireside chat ended and the hospital unveiled their new name, Gambel Communications quickly ushered the media into press conference space and moderated the Q&A between the dozen media outlets and Archie, Eli, Cooper and Todd Graves.
After the press conference concluded, Gambel Communications immediately shared out the pool camera footage of the fireside chat, distributed the press release announcing the renaming and deployed a wire press release the following morning after the hospital’s onsite celebration that unveiled the new logo on the façade of the building.
In the days that followed, Gambel Communications continued to engage with local and regional media that were not present at the Louisiana Legacy event and coordinated several additional interviews with the hospital’s CEO and Archie Manning.
Evaluation
Despite the numerous logistic hurdles and constantly evolving media strategy, Gambel Communications was able to secure the presence of two dozen media outlets at the Louisiana Legacy event including all five major New Orleans news outlets as well as national reporters from the Associated Press, Daily Mail, FOX Sports, Getty, NBC, NY Post, Sports Illustrated and TMZ, to name a few.
The news coverage generated from the Louisiana Legacy event and the press conference that followed resulted in more than 442 story placements thanks to multiple syndications. Those initial stories reached a potential 1.6 million people. To further amplify the earned media coverage, Gambel Communications distributed a paid wire news release, and it was picked up by 566 media outlets and syndicated to 919 Associated Press outlets around the country, reaching an additional potential audience of 214.5 million people.
The inaugural Louisiana Legacy event was deemed a success by hospital leaders and the renaming to Manning Family Children’s was well received in the New Orleans community.
Samples of local print news coverage.