Client Situation
With the introduction of nationalgeographic.com, the venerable National Geographic Society launched its Interactive Division in 1996. The site provides visitors first-hand exploration via their computer and serves as a cross-promotional vehicle for the Society as a whole - drawing its content from the Society's vast store of valuable resources. Updated on a frequent basis, the site's innovative content continues to attract visitors.
Strategy
Following the site launch, Connors Communications has worked to continue to maintain and build consumer and media interest in nationalgeographic.com by highlighting its strong editorial content. We've complemented our traditional media relations initiatives with online outreach. Over the course of the program we've implemented numerous vertical campaigns to sustain momentum for the site and to support awareness of both individual modules and live events.
Program Goals
- To sustain awareness for ng.com among current users and media
- To expand reach to new audiences and potential members
Tactics
Connors has promoted site features and events on the site through targeted media relations efforts. Because of challenges with a "fluid" editorial calendar, outreach has focused primarily on short lead consumer print outlets, cool/hot/new Web sites (for example, Yahoo! Pick of the Day), and vertical ezines. Connors has worked with the nationalgeographic.com editorial team to "cherry pick features that are ripe for promotion." For example, when the site launched a new dinosaur feature we contacted dinosaur vertical interest sites, as well as traditional print media. Connors recently did a content module promotion of the site's liveOtterCam, featuring the antics of river otters, Splash and Slide. We chose to promote this feature because of its interactivity and also its timely nature. The live camera was only available for a few weeks and it complemented a National Geographic Explorer television special, Otter Chaos that was airing on CNBC.
Results
For Otter Cam, Connors focused on consumer technology writers at the top 25 newspapers and cool/hot/new sites. We contacted them with a creative media alert that encouraged them to check out Splash and Slide and to also tune into the television program. Connors conducted an aggressive follow-up effort to encourage the media to put pen to paper. Feature stories ran in The New York Times, USA Today, The Chicago Tribune, The Orlando Sentinel, the Kansas City Star, the St. Louis Post Dispatch as well as many other papers with a traditional media outreach of more than 5 million. Online placements included Yahoo!, Web Search, Netscape and USAToday.com.
Among the other campaigns was one for the 60 year anniversary coverage of Pearl Harbor. And thanks to the combination of coverage from an SEO-savvy PR firm, National Geographic still maintains top results five years later -- the #1 position in Google for a search on Pearl Harbor.
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