CASE STUDY: WINNING THE RAT RACE! DEVELOPING AN OUTSTANDING TRADE MEDIA RELATIONS CAMPAIGN FOR ORKIN COMMERCIAL SERVICES

Client:

Assignment:

Orkin Commercial Services turns to Jackson Spalding annually to develop and execute a marketing communications strategy. The goals of the media relations portion of the campaign are to raise affinity of the Orkin brand among target audiences in seven vertical sectors as well as the support the sales team by providing unique opportunities to develop relationships with prospects.

Strategy/Implementation:

During the past four years, we found that trade publication editors didn't have the staff to write all of their own articles, but they were looking for new, relevant material for their readers. We began the by-lined article program, offering to draft articles by an Orkin expert related to various pest control topics pertinent to the publication's industry. We first identified key trade publications and researched editorial calendars to find obvious matches. Using the team's accumulated knowledge of commercial pest control and brainstorms with Orkin's experts, the team wrote and pitched a number of new and catchy angles on otherwise staid topics. Rather than let editors dictate the lengths of the articles, we persuaded several editors to accept a series of shorter articles rather than just one feature-length by-liner - helping increase frequency of coverage and avoid the trap of editorial calendars that kept pest control coverage to a minimum.

Results:

Over the course of 2007, the Orkin team placed and wrote 63 by-lined articles and generated 151 media placements reaching multiple industry targets, helping maintain Orkin's brand awareness among all target business audiences. Impressions totaled 8,913,122, thus exceeding the objective of 7.2 million impressions and 140 placements. In addition, we have increased the number of by-lined article placements since beginning work with Orkin Commercial Services in 2003. The number of impressions has steadily increased and the cost per impression has decreased every year since the campaign's inception.