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CapitolReport May12, 2011

 The Donald G. Padilla Distinguished Practitioner Award recognizes an individual who is judged to have made selfless contributions to the community and to the mission of PRSA, and who has demonstrated exceptional professional achievement.

In an editorial noting the award, the Saint Paul Pioneer Press wrote:

We offer a loud and lusty shout out to Ted Davis. He is in the biz of public relations and is being honored for his service to our community above-and-beyond his PR duties. His list of volunteer activities is impressive: American Red Cross, Serving Our Troops, the Lupus Foundation, the St. Paul Police Foundation, the St. Paul RiverCentre Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Midway Chamber of Commerce. Of such resumes are communities built. Way to go, Ted!

 -Saint Paul Pioneer Press, Friday, March 26, 2010

The 2008 Republican National Convention brought to Saint Paul, Minnesota the largest group of national and international visitors in the city’s history.  Among them were 15,000 members of the national and international media.

Seizing the opportunity

Saint Paul’s civic leadership organizations engaged Davis Communications Management to assemble a team to take full advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity to demonstrate its livability, economic strength, and civic capability to new audiences. Working with the media relations team at Goff & Howard, we developed an intense six month media outreach campaign to assure that Saint Paul’s story rose from the media clutter surrounding the convention. The work included developing stories, working directly with news decision makers from around the world to place those stories, assisting media organizations with their arrangements in Saint Paul and assuring that they had 24/7 access to key spokespeople and local characters while in Saint Paul.

The Results

Saint Paul did indeed reach new and different audiences around the world through the media coverage generated by the city hosting the 2008 Republican National Convention.  From daily broadcasts on ABC, CNN, CBS, CNN and MSNBC to feature stories in the International Herald Tribune and Agence France-Presse, Saint Paul’s messages reached new audiences on a massive scale.

A three minute piece that ran on ABC World News Tonight offers a glimpse of the national coverage Saint Paul earned in September 2008.  Take a look here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlwdF5HMm7w

By engaging strategic media and communications counsel to leverage the opportunity of the 2008 Republican National Convention, Saint Paul earned coverage of the key elements that make the city attractive to investors, creative class workers and visitors.

At the beginning of the process, transit modes under consideration included light rail transit, bus rapid transit, transportation systems management, and no-build.

Seizing the Opportunity
Davis Communications Management was retained by the rail authority to design and manage a public involvement program that would not only engage the designated leaders of neighborhood groups but also bring previously under-represented people into the process.

The three-year communications program included:
• Focus groups to determine the transit preference and values of under-represented individuals;
• A random sample survey to test the ideas gathered in focus groups;
• Development of a ‘community sounding group’ to determine interest in transit improvements;
• A targeted media relations campaign to educate and elicit comments from the residents and businesses in the corridor;
• A newsletter and Internet strategy to provide audiences with updated information on the progress of the study;
• A speakers bureau and traveling display designed to educate audiences and elicit feedback;
• A public affairs outreach program to assure that policy makers and their advisors understood the goals and objectives of the study, the preferences of the diverse audiences, and the transit needs of the corridor.

The Results
After two years of aggressive outreach, policy makers in Ramsey County and Saint Paul had a clear picture of the transit needs and desires of the Riverview Corridor Community. They clearly saw that there was little support for Light Rail Transit and that the business community, neighborhood leaders, and city planners had varying levels of support for bus rapid transit. Most importantly, key constituencies had a higher level of understanding of the transit options for the corridor and were able to articulate informed opinions.

Armed with this information, along with a potential grant from the state of Minnesota, the Saint Paul City Council, the Ramsey County Regional Railroad Authority and the Metropolitan Council all endorsed the development of Bus Rapid Transit in the Riverview Corridor.

On Sunday, April 15, 2007 the Minnesota National Guard members deployed in Iraq enjoyed a steak dinner with their families- half a world apart. In the largest event of its kind in military history, more than 2,600 Minnesotans in Iraq dined on steaks shipped form Saint Paul while more than 3,000 of their family members had the same dinner at the Roy Wilkins Auditorium in St. Paul. Both events were linked by video so families could see and talk with their soldier. More than 2 Million Minnesotans were touched by the event through extensive media coverage that generated more than 30 TV news stories, dozens of print stories and extensive radio coverage.

Ted Davis, Principal of Davis Communications Management was one of the founders of Serving Our Troops in 2004. For the St. Paul to Iraq event, Ted played a central role in the planning and fundraising effort while directing and implementing the communications effort.

Among the communications tools created for this project were:
• A remarkably affecting fundraising video
• A true partnership with KSTP Television to create the video connections between St. Paul and Iraq
• An intensive federal government relations effort to gain permission form the military to undertake the mission
• An event that was as fun as it was moving.

Serving Our Troops raised more than $500,000 in cash and in kind services for the event. The job included sourcing and shipping 11,500 12 ounce steaks to Iraq, preparing 4,000 meals in St. Paul and figuring out how to set up a two way video link to take the meal across the globe. A very complex way to deliver a simple meal with the family.

For more on Serving Our Troops, visit www.servingourtroops.com.

Using this positioning, Ted led a team of Chamber of Commerce volunteers and staff in creating a media relations and grassroots organizing campaign designed to leave no doubt in legislators’ minds that businesses from the Saint Paul area backed the proposal. The Chamber took the lead in developing a coalition of organized labor, youth sports activists, and supporters of community center projects throughout the state. Ted developed a grassroots communications system to keep coalition members informed and provide them with a way to contact key legislators at pivotal moments in the debate.

Ted also developed and implemented an aggressive media relations strategy designed to show legislators a deep and broad well of support for the arena proposal within the greater Saint Paul community.

The Results
After a very contentious debate, the Minnesota legislature authorized a $65 million loan to the City of Saint Paul to allow construction to go forward. More than 2,000 employees of Chamber member companies contacted elected officials on the issue during the session and delivered a unified message of support. The campaign effectively established the Saint Paul Area Chamber of Commerce and its officers as the primary news source on business issues in Minnesota’s capital city. During the debate, the Chamber and its position registered nearly 10 million impressions in the regional media as the lead business organization on the issue.

Seizing the opportunity
One week before the start of the legislative session, the college brought in Ted Davis as the lead strategist for a grassroots effort to restore the Art Building to the bonding bill and get it signed by the Governor.

Working with a highly motivated Dean and his external relations staff, Ted developed a plan to identify and mobilize supporters of the University and to create visibility for the Art Building request through the media. Groups mobilized in support of the new Art Building included University students, their parents, University Alumni, donors, arts educators from throughout the state, arts supporters, and business organizations.

A rally on the University Campus energized 800 students to provide names of friends, relatives and acquaintances for a contact database to stimulate legislative contacts. Media coverage of the event, including effective visual images of the old art building, began to raise visibility of the desperate need for a new art building. From that core, Ted and the team developed a list of more that 2,000 people who could be counted on to contact key legislators.

Working with a dedicated group of students, the team created a constant presence at bonding committee meetings while key legislators received a barrage of messages in support of funding for the new art building.

The Results
Thousands of contacts from students, alumni, donors and friends of the arts and effective statewide media coverage had a profound effect on the legislature. Throughout the bonding conference committee process, the House of Representatives insisted that the Art Building project required two more years of planning and $2 million in funding. The Senate held out for $21 million. When the dust settled, the Governor signed a bonding bill that included $17 million for a new Art Building for the University of Minnesota. The Regis Center for Art opened in October, 2003.

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