Outraged by the domestic violence in the Ray Rice incident, WRAL general manager, Steve Hammel, and Shelly Leslie, creative director at WRAL, Capitol Broadcasting’s CBS affiliate in Raleigh, N.C., gathered some co-workers to brainstorm how they could use the power of television to make a difference. Within a few hours, the team had ideas that […]
Outraged by the domestic violence in the Ray Rice incident, WRAL general manager, Steve Hammel, and Shelly Leslie, creative director at WRAL, Capitol Broadcasting’s CBS affiliate in Raleigh, N.C., gathered some co-workers to brainstorm how they could use the power of television to make a difference.
Within a few hours, the team had ideas that grew into a multimedia campaign across Capitol’s television and radio stations, websites and even its minor league baseball team, the Durham Bulls.
The highlight of their plan was to run this 90-second PSA during halftime of the CBS Thursday Night Football game between the Baltimore Ravens (Ray Rice’s former team) and the Pittsburgh Steelers. WRAL also aired another 60-second domestic violence PSA during the pre-game.
In addition, Leslie shot some behind-the-scenes photos of the PSA for the talent to use on social media, and created some statistical graphics for their twitter feeds.
“It took less than 24 hours to plan and execute this on air initiative across Capitol Broadcasting,”” Leslie says.
“One week from now, we will host a five-hour phone bank staffed with knowledgeable experts to help people in crisis. We hope what we’re starting is a movement of outrage so loud, people can no longer turn away. That domestic and sexual violence can no longer be ignored.”
Capitol Broadcasting is one of the partner agencies with the North Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence which created www.enoughnc.org, a statewide, county-by-county resource for survivors and their batterers.
Leslie says the mission of Capitol’s most recent multimedia campaign was to get people to that website.
The results of the campaign are impressive. The Thursday Night Football game reached 147,866 households in the Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville market, averaging a 12.7 rating, 21 share.
“Yes, we gave up thousands of dollars in ad inventory to run the PSAs,” says Leslie.
The website, www.enoughnc.org, experienced 14 times its normal traffic, with 90% of those being new visitors.
The campaign generated national social media participation from Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts and Ohio.
To read more about WRAL’s efforts to stop domestic violence, click here.
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