That’s a Wrap on the Billboards

As we previously shared, our Billboards were live in Atlanta, and were up for a full month, coming down just recently, on Monday July 10th.

A HUGE Thank You to everyone who donated to make those a reality! We couldn’t have done it without your generous donations.

Now that the billboards are down, we wanted to share a little bit more information about how that event played out.

We launched the billboards on Monday, June 13th. At that time, we had one of our members go down to the two site locations and take photographs of them so we could promote them on social media and other channels.

On June 15th, we launched a national press release about the billboards to gain national coverage. In early July, we launched a second regional press release about the billboards to gain coverage in Georgia.

In addition to media coverage about the billboards (more on that below), we also know that Coca-Cola executives did read our press release–and we also sent them a letter with a formal request to speak with them about the billboards and our request to bring back TaB (we’re still awaiting a response.)

We learned a lot doing this event:

• We learned how to raise funds from the TaB drinking community for a group project.
• We learned how to engage in contracts with entities such as the outdoor advertising company and the press release firm.
• We found out it’s a LOT of work coming up with the billboard designs, as well as working through the legal hurdles around what we were permitted to place on them (especially with a group of volunteers working on it who also have day jobs).
• It’s expensive doing press releases, and we are still learning about the differences we get in coverage from paid media (press release) versus earned media (when a reporter just decides to write about us).

Media Coverage:

(this is as of July 14th)

287 news outlets did an EXACT Match placement of our press release (meaning they posted it word-for-word on their website).

Outlets included entities such as: Local stations (Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC), Newspapers, Online Media, etc. (see graphs below):

Release Views

To date, we’ve had over 3,000 direct views of the news release. This could be by general consumers or by members of the news media. These releases also help people find out about our efforts to save TaB when they are doing google searches online. The more articles and web publications that have an article (or press release) written about our efforts, the more likely it is to be picked up in search results–which points people directly to our website, the petition to sign, and the number at Coca-Cola to call.

Articles Written

In addition to the exact match placements, we have had at least two articles written about the billboards by journalists. It’s difficult for us to scour all of the internet to see where else we might show up, so if you find one, let us know!

PennLive.com

StupidDope

Continued Coverage

While we’re really excited about all of the coverage we received so far–we’re still trying to reach additional journalists! Even though our billboards are no longer up, we believe there’s quite a story to tell about a group of soda drinkers who care so much for their favorite soda, they’d raise funds to erect billboards in an effort to bring it back!

If you have any media contacts or ideas of who we should be talking to, let us know!

Next Up

Please stay tuned for some updates on what else we’ve been working on behind the scenes this summer, as well as a call for suggestions on our next group activity. We may not have TaB back yet, but we’re in this for the long haul, and we’re only getting started…

-SaveTaBSoda Committee