Ghidotti won big at the 2020 PRISM awards organized by the Arkansas Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) chapter. The Little Rock public relations and content marketing agency led by Natalie Ghidotti, APR, took home 15 of 38 awards announced during the virtual 2020 ARCom Arkansas Marketing and Communications Event. The awards recognize exceptional public relations programs and the skills of the state’s top practitioners, companies and organizations.
“The PRISM awards recognize and help model the best public relations practices and strategies across our state and it was incredibly humbling to receive a staggering 15 of these awards for projects with our incredible client partners,” said Ghidotti President and CEO Natalie Ghidotti. “Our team of amazing public relations professionals is truly fortunate to work with organizations that appreciate the power of strategic communications to drive positive growth and change in their organizations and our community.”
The 2020 PRISM awards Ghidotti earned, which were judged independently by fellow public relations professionals from the Public Relations Association of Philadelphia, ranged from business and nonprofit client campaigns to content marketing and multimedia projects. This year’s award-winning public relations projects included:
Community Relations – Business: Mitchell Williams Take Time to Give Campaign
As a full-service corporate law firm, Mitchell, Williams, Selig, Gates & Woodyard, P.L.L.C. has been a progressive leader in the legal community providing strategic, comprehensive legal services to help clients achieve their goals. For more than 60 years, the Mitchell Williams Law Firm has also given back to the communities where its people live and work. Fifteen years ago, the firm formalized its years of giving into a branded program called Take Time To Give. Ghidotti worked with Mitchell Williams to develop a comprehensive plan that would increase awareness of the firm’s corporate social responsibility initiatives throughout the year to include a special week of volunteer focus.
Content Marketing – Association/Nonprofit/Government: Thanks A Billion Project
The Thanks A Billion Project is an exercise in joyful defiance against our fear. Little Rock-based therapist and entrepreneur Ken Clark approached Ghidotti at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic about his interest in combating people’s growing fear and anxiety with a message about the power of gratitude. Our agency immediately knew the project was something we wanted to put 110% of our efforts into bringing to life. It was the perfect fit for us to give back to our community in a meaningful way during such unprecedented times. Ghidotti created and executed a content marketing strategy around a 30-day gratitude challenge with daily blogs, videos, emails and social media content to make sure the project made the biggest impact possible in the shortest amount of time.
Content Marketing – Business: Ghidotti Legal Marketing Campaign
Ghidotti developed a legal content marketing strategy to identify service offerings that would assist law firms and legal marketers in creating an integrated approach to increase leads and cases while improving brand recognition and awareness. Based on our own understanding of the legal industry and content marketing practices, we developed a comprehensive strategy to highlight the value of content marketing for mid-sized law firms and its power to generate leads, brand awareness and thought leadership.
Crisis Communications: McDonald’s COVID-19 Response
The ArkLaTex and MISS-TN McDonald’s cooperatives of local owner-operators account for approximately 413 individual McDonald’s restaurants and dozens of owner-operators across Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee and Mississippi. During the COVID-19 crisis our team, which manages public relations and crisis communications for both Coops, quickly paused existing PR and went into crisis communications mode with thoughtful communications to ensure guests knew McDonald’s was still open for business, drive brand loyalty and mitigate potential negative news coverage.
Media Relations: McDonald’s Archways to Opportunity Program
One way McDonald’s restaurants support crew members on their career journey is through Archways to Opportunity, a comprehensive education program gives restaurant employees have the opportunity to receive $2,500 in upfront college tuition assistance, access to free education, career advising services and the opportunity to learn English as a second language or earn a high school diploma. More than 330 employees had already taken advantage of the program in Arkansas alone. In order to help more employees learn about the program and attract high quality prospective employees, Ghidotti worked with Central Arkansas McDonald’s Owner-Operators to identify great employees involved in the program and share their stories with local media. That included a news conference in the Arkansas State Capitol with Gov. Asa Hutchinson timed with McDonald’s Global People Day, an annual event to celebrate crew members across the world.
Marketing Communications – Nonprofit: Hot Springs Village Discovery Packages
Hot Springs Village, the nation’s largest gated community, is spread across 26,000 acres in the Ouachita Mountains and offers residents the state’s natural beauty. With their Discovery Packages, visitors can enjoy their amenities––a perfect experience for potential new residents. To help market these packages, Ghidotti created a strategic marketing plan to create awareness and drive new leads. Exceeding our goal, from June – August leads increased 54% while year to date was up 41%.
PR on a Shoestring Budget – Nonprofit: Catholic High School for Boys 2019–2020 School Year
Catholic High School for Boys was founded by Bishop John B. Morris of the Diocese of Little Rock in 1930 to ensure that Catholic boys in the Little Rock area had access to quality Catholic secondary education. The school traditionally has spent minimal dollars on marketing as it depends greatly on its rich history and outstanding reputation to drive admissions each year. Ghidotti chose to take Catholic High as a pro bono client for the 2019–2020 academic year to help maximize the 90th anniversary of one of Little Rock’s oldest schools. Using information from several strategy sessions and focus groups, Ghidotti built a strategic public relations plan that relied heavily on earned media and social media to connect with stakeholders and drive reputation management over the school year.
Public Service: Thanks A Billion Project
Ghidotti partnered with Ken Clark to put our content marketing expertise to work in shaping his vision for launching an exponential wave of gratitude. We knew there was a lot of content available about gratitude, but following our initial research, The Thanks A Billion Project developed into a series of videos that taught people how to say thanks to the people in their lives, reaching more than 60k and gaining 1,000+ followers across social channels.
Reputation/Brand Management – Business: Mitchell Williams Law 65th Anniversary
For Ghidotti’s second award for its work with Mitchell, Williams, Selig, Gates & Woodyard, P.L.L.C., the team focused on updating Mitchell Williams’ brand marketing, including executing a paid media strategy and creating a monthly content marketing strategy executed via website, blogs, social media, earned media and client email marketing. Based on primary research, we knew what content in-house counsel and C-suite value most when making legal purchasing decisions, which guided the development of our content strategy. We also developed a content marketing roadmap to educate attorneys on the process of the firm’s content strategy. And, finally, we put a robust series of events in place that focused on the Take Time to Give program and volunteering in the community.
Special Events Less Than Seven Days – Business: CHI St. Vincent Arkansas Neuroscience Institute Grand Opening
The CHI St. Vincent Arkansas Neuroscience Institute (ANI) Research and Education Center is a new, state-of-the-art neurosurgery facility created to improve treatment outcomes for patients, map the human brain and provide training for neurosurgeons from around the world to develop the skills necessary to tackle the most complex cases. Looking ahead to the center’s Grand Opening, Ghidotti developed a multi-tiered media outreach strategy aimed at not simply celebrating the grand opening, but building momentum over five-months leading up to that event, communicating research advancements underway at ANI, sharing patient stories and raising local awareness about the international recognition the ANI team receives.
Brochures: Hot Springs Village Brochure with Golf Insert
Hot Springs Village, the nation’s largest gated community, is spread across 26,000 acres in the Ouachita Mountains and offers residents the state’s natural beauty. Golfing is a huge aspect of the community as HSV boasts nine courses that attract golfers from across the nation. To help market towards prospective residents, Ghidotti created a brochure highlighting their incredible amenities and to showcase it as a golfer’s dream destination with a rack card highlighting the course.
Feature/News Writing: Ghidotti Blog
Ghidotti Media Relations Manager Joshua Cook knows all too well how much excitement, anxiety, confusion and miscommunication can follow a reporter’s request for an interview. To help businesses better prepare and ensure they don’t lose that sometimes precious opportunity, he wrote the blog post, “Five Questions to Ask Journalists BEFORE an Interview.” The honesty, simplicity and very applicable takeaways from the blog caught the attention of journalists, leading to additional coverage from Arkansas Business.
Multimedia – Less Than One Minute: Hot Springs Village Golf Video
As part of Ghidotti’s integrated approach to public relations and content marketing for Hot Springs Village, our team produced a series of short videos that highlighted not just the village’s nine golf courses, but also what it is like to live in that community. The final result was a professional and stunning 2-minute full-length video and several 15-second videos that were easy to share and represented the community well with beautiful visuals and engaging commentary from residents. The videos told the story of living in a golfer’s paradise.
Electronic Periodicals: Thanks A Billion Project
Ghidotti partnered with Ken Clark to put our expertise to work in shaping his vision for launching an exponential wave of gratitude. We knew there was a lot of content available, but following our research, The Thanks A Billion Project developed into a video series teaching people how to say thank you. To raise awareness and garner wide reach, we developed a content strategy to produce and publish 30 videos for a growing list of subscribers.
Podcast/Vodcast: The Ghidotti Podcast
The Ghidotti Podcast is a series of bi-weekly episodes featuring interviews with Arkansas movers and shakers, disrupters, culture changers, business leaders and community influencers. The podcast is targeted to those busy Arkansans who want to learn more about people making a difference – yet in an easy-to-consume medium such as audio. Our goal with The Ghidotti Podcast is simple: to shine a light on those who are making Arkansas a thriving state.
This year saw more than 100 award entries submitted by companies, public relations agencies and individual practitioners across Arkansas. Is your organization working on a content marketing project that really needs to stand out from the pack? Do you need a public relations strategy built around your values? Be sure to contact Ghidotti to explore how our team can help your business achieve measurable, exceptional and award-winning results.