The opportunity
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.