Xenophon Strategies

The Salvation Army

Developing National News

Showcasing charity’s staff accomplishments with a long lead pitch.

Project Highlights

• Strategic Counsel
• Public and Media Relations
• National News Creation

Background

In 2009 The Salvation Army wanted to enlarge their brand and reputation of services offered to clients, since the media and general public mostly know the charity for its thrift stores and iconic red kettles during Christmastime. To accomplish this goal, Xenophon Strategies developed a long-lead pitch calendar for The Salvation Army, highlighting unique programs run by the organization. The plan included Xenophon researching, crafting and proactively pitching feature stories to national media  throughout the year centering on six programs The Salvation Army manages, such as community gardens, summer camps for seniors, young philanthropists, and teen homelessness.

Front page story in USA Today’s Life Section “Homeless people learn to feed others as chefs,” featured The Salvation Army reaching an audience of more than 2 million people.

Halfway through 2009, with the continued rise in popularity of cooking and lifestyle themes, Xenophon Strategies focused on researching and developing a pitch that highlighted three Salvation Army chefs and the culinary-training programs they run for homeless and unemployed individuals.

Overview

In order to provide any media with a unique pitch, Xenophon researched not only the appropriate media outlets and reporters, but also the backgrounds of The Salvation Army chefs who would represent the organization as national spokespersons.

Xenophon researched and targeted reporters at a variety of lifestyle publications including Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, Martha Stewart and Cooking Light. Xenophon also researched reporters of cooking, health and life sections of national newspapers such as The New York Times and USA Today.

Xenophon conducted pre-interviews with each chef in order to gather enough information to develop a pitch that would provide any reporter with tangible facts for their story and information.

Tactics

Once research was completed, a pitch was developed that outlined the premise of the story. Beginning in August, Xenophon Strategies began contacting reporters from national print publications, receiving interest from three national publications including USA Today, which requested an exclusive story.

For the next several weeks, Xenophon coordinated interviews with Salvation Army chefs and USA Today. In addition, Xenophon also coordinated two photo shoots with USA Today for chefs in Louisville, KY. and Mobile, AL.

Results

A front page story of USA Today’s Life Section was released on August 27, 2009. The story, “Homeless people learn to feed others as chefs,” featured The Salvation Army reaching an audience of more than two million people. The article was also released on USA Today’s Web site, which averages over one million viewers a day.

The story also generated additional attention online from numerous blogs including The Chronicle of Philanthropy, a major nonprofit trade publication. The article also generated significant conversation on social networking Web sites including Facebook and Twitter.