OUR AWARDS
THE SAUNDERS PR GROUP
Public Relations ● Strategic Communications ● Reputation Management
Our Clients
National and Columbus Urban leagues, City of Columbus Public Service, Columbus Public Health, Public Safety and Mayor’s Office, Franklin County Board of Commissioners, Smart Columbus, The Ohio State University, West Virginia University, Brooklyn College, The Ohio Lottery, Smart Columbus, CelebrateOne, Columbus City Schools, Partners Achieving Community Transformation, COTA, Columbus Next Generation, CMHA, Pickerington North High School Basketball, Urban Lacrosse, Paul Werth Associates and Murphy-Epson.
Columbus and Franklin County 2020 Census Campaign
Our Charge: The Saunders PR Group was engaged to lead the city of Columbus and Franklin County 2020 Census
outreach and engagement efforts associated with generating awareness and getting residents to take the 2020 Census.
Our focus was on hard-to-count communities.
Our Plan: TSPRG developed a comprehensive marketing, public relations and grassroots plan, along with a robust media buy plan using research data from the US census, the NAACP and the National Urban League related to messaging, audience engagement and channels to inform our efforts. Our target audience was 16-18, 19-44, 45-65, 65-plus. TSPRG created all design and creative in house. We aligned our public relations strategy with a robust, hyper-local, hyper-targeted advertising media buy, leveraged diverse print publications. (Somali, Spanish and African American publications). Our plan included a strong community engagement component, activating street team outreach at local events (we pivoted once COVID-19 hit to digital and online options), We made posters for placement in stores and curated special events and weekly town hall sessions.
Our Results: Our viewership for townhalls ranged from 1.1K to 5.6K viewers with over 2300 engagements and reactions. Our efforts helped to increase participation rates for the U.S. Census to 68.4% compared to a 66% response rate in 2010.
Reimagine Public Safety -
Columbus City Council
Our Charge: Building upon its public hearing phase, Columbus City Council included additional engagement opportunities to hear from Columbus residents as part of its 2021 budgeting process. Members of Columbus City Council wanted a robust community engagement process in order to gauge how residents would "reimagine" public safety and policing in Central Ohio.
Our Plan: TSPRG created a multi-tiered strategy, which included an online, 16-question survey, virtual and in-person focus groups, partner engagement, eMarketing, virtual town halls with Menti engagement exercises engaging the public, earned and social media and a digital buy. We presented during each town hall meeting and conducted an online engagement exercise, resulting in increased community insights. Town halls were live
streamed on Columbus City Council Facebook and YouTube social media channels.
Our Results: We received nearly 4,000 total online responses, held and facilitated over 15 focus groups, provided tools to over 82 faith-based organizations, connected with and connected with New Americans, immigrants, justice restored youth and adults, disability groups, seniors and youth. With COVID-19 creating a barrier for community engagement, we successfully rose to the task with using virtual options to drive results. We presented our findings to members of Columbus City Council and the public during a City Council meeting and submitted a final comprehensive report.
Chief and Me – Chief of Police Selection Community Outreach and Engagement
The Saunders PR Group was engaged by Mayor Andrew Ginther’s office to drive community engagement and outreach as part of the Columbus chief of police selection process. Our charge was to build a brand identity, create a series of community forums, create and execute an on-line survey, conduct key influencer meetings and engage the community to offer their ideas and input on what they wanted to see in the next chief of police.
CelebrateOne Multimedia Campaign
The Saunders PR Group has been a partner with CelebrateOne since the inception of CelebrateOne. We have created branding, creative concepts, videos and the development of safe sleep campaign strategies to reduce infant deaths. Whether its targeting the African American community, as African American babies are dying at three times the rate of other babies in our community, making sure our videos are in multiple languages and culturally relevant, driving community engagement, media buys, earned media and social media - we create and execute robust and comprehensive campaigns that remind families to always practice the ABCs of safe sleep.
Our Charge:
Created and executed comprehensive media buy campaign to increase education and awareness for Celebrate One, Columbus' Infant Mortality efforts to reduce infant death in Central Ohio.
What We Did:
The Saunders PR Group was instrumental in identifying, leading and conducting focus groups, developing messaging, creative development of the Safe Sleep Campaign and Real People Real Stories campaign.
Category: Video
Objective 1: Create a public awareness campaign to highlight unusually high infant mortality rates before the age of one and action steps to help reverse the trend.
Objective 2: Create an outreach and education campaign on safe sleep habits for infants aligned with the CelebrateOne initiative to reduce infant mortality.
Our award winning video has been viewed over 6000 times (to date) on You Tube.
Deliverables:
- Aligned with the overarching goals of the CelebrateOne initiative to reduce infant mortality, public service announcements were created for television, the web and radio to extend the campaign message throughout the central Ohio community. PSAs complement a comprehensive print and digital campaign to educate and provide clear calls to action
- Created the Safe Sleep campaign to bring attention to improper sleep habits that directly contribute to infant mortality and how to remedy this problem. Launched on the heels of CelebrateOne, the Safe Sleep campaign offers solutions known as the ABCs of safe sleep (alone, on their back, in a crib) in the form of compelling video. Ongoing outreach and education includes a multimedia approach utilizing broadcast, print and digital media to strengthen awareness of safe sleep practices.
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The Saunders PR Group was a member of the Paul Werth team that was tasked with building from the ground up, a complete brand identity for the Infant Mortality Task Force. The team conducted a series of brainstorm sessions, brand development exercises, creative testing and leadership insight gathering leading to the creation of the CelebrateOne name, all brand elements, supporting icons, color palette, brand guidelines and the total package for brand identity.
2014 - 2017 Safe Sleep Campaigns
The Saunders PR Group acted as lead project manager as a subcontractor with Paul Werth Associates to lead the creation and development of the StepOne logo and brand. From researching phone numbers to try to secure a unique number, conducting naming creative roundtables, to being cognizant of the importance of incorporating with and aligning to the CelebrateOne brand, while creating its own identity. We were deliberate in incorporating the importance of pregnancy into the brand, which was part of the overall consideration for the final concept and visual imagery. The Saunders Company’s CEO led the team, working directly with the Paul Werth creative team, from beginning to end to meet the goals of the client.
Category: Print
Objective: Create a branded initiative to increase awareness of pregnancy and prenatal information and referral services to reduce infant mortality
Deliverables:
Created a brand strategy and a unique brand identity – StepOne – to speak to newly pregnant women and their support network with a goal of connecting expectant mothers with affordable, timely and convenient prenatal care and resources for a healthy pregnancy. Developed a comprehensive action-oriented marketing campaign including informational flyers, fact sheets, infographics, posters, initiative-related premiums and radio advertisements.
PACT
Objective: The Saunders PR Group recommended and led a rebranding effort to its client, to help modernize and connect the brand with today’s consumers, while at the same time honoring its heritage. We conducted research, walking the client through branding exercises to ascertain goals, determine what PACT meant from a character standpoint, we used our branding process to get internal and external perspectives of PACT’s former brand, and to get a sense of what was wanted in a new brand to represent PACT. We developed several concepts based upon client insights and external viewpoints, created a new logo, color palette, typography, new look and leveraged the heritage tag line, and developed brand guidelines, which included font use, colors and use of logo and incorporated the heritage tie-in.
A.M.P. Franklin County Jobs and Family Services
We were charged with creating a new identity and messaging for an existing component CCMEP (Comprehensive Case Management and Employment Program) program within the Franklin County Job and Family Services Workforce Development program for youth. The previous name was complicated and created a negative or neutral response from the intended target audience. Our challenge was to develop messaging and a visual identity that would attract 16 to 24-year-old opportunity youth into the program, that case managers would use and that could be a possible use for the program in other counties. We conducted research by holding focus groups with program participants, opportunity youth in Franklin County, with the case managers and leadership of the program.
Working in concert with Paul Werth Associates, The Saunders Group led focus group sessions, creative branding exercises and the creative development. Once we determined right messaging, we tested it along with multiple visual concepts. The final deliverables included messaging, brand guidelines, logo, posters, hot cards, a video and translated services.