SUDEN PR - Media Relations Campaign of the Year

Company: SUDEN PR, New York, NY
Company Description: A woman-owned & operated, full-service, public relations agency serving clients across all industries. Headquartered in the city that never sleeps.
Nomination Category: Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, & Public Relations Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Media Relations

Nomination Title: An Act of Kindness - How One Artist Gave Back During the Pandemic by Buying the Work of the Undiscovered

Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched: This campaign was launched on November 10, 2020.

Haitian-born modern artist Guy Stanley Philoche has been painting in his Harlem apartment for over 20 years with a lot of success. But in 2020, the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic wreaked havoc on the arts and culture industry, which experienced significant economic setbacks. Consumer purchasing behavior changed, galleries were forced to close, all public in-person art fairs were canceled, and artist unemployment skyrocketed, taking a devastating toll on the industry. According to a recent survey, the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the arts and culture industry has amounted to $4.5 billion.

Therefore, to help curve this economic impact and to help the artists who are struggling, it was clear that we first needed to support smaller, local artists. Philoche, always having committed to purchasing a painting whenever he sold a painting knew he wanted to purchase artwork from these artists, but it proved a challenge as it wouldn’t be easy to connect with every artist in need.

Given the situation, we needed to think strategically on how we could access as many artists as possible and inform them of our initiative to help support them and purchase their artwork. And what better way than trying to take over the media cycle?

To bring this concept to life, we came up with a strategic outreach plan on how we were going to outreach each media outlet, when these stories would run and how we can capitalize on each story to make the next one even better.

In mobilizing available resources, we utilized Philoche’s Instagram video where he announced that he was looking to purchase as much artwork as possible and encouraged artists to send him a message with their work. On November 10, 2020, the story broke online with People Magazine, who embedded the video in the story, driving additional traffic to Philoche’s Instagram channel to drive more messages and purchases.

Following the People Magazine announcement, we strategically seeded the story to top national news outlets, including Associated Press, CNN, and Scripps TV. These outlets provided the perfect launch pad, as they had an international reach and had the ability to be syndicated by additional local and national outlets. And as the news began to spread, we supplemented with outreach to local New York City news outlets including New York Amsterdam News, amNewYorkMETRO, FOX 5, Observer, and more. We wanted to ensure Philoche’s story was everywhere, and during the fall of 2020, it was.

As of July 2021, the campaign has garnered over 201.85B potential impressions from over 500 media outlets across print, online, broadcast and radio! Media couldn’t get enough of the story, most notably, Associated Press published a feature story that was syndicated by 366 media outlets, Scripps TV ran across 48 local broadcast stations and CNN was syndicated by 31 outlets. Most of the coverage went live in November and December 2020 garnering 192.6B impressions from more than 400 outlets, with remaining coverage running January through April 2021.

Campaign highlights included:

-Features in major national news, lifestyle, entertainment, and regional New York City outlets, including Emmy Award-winning daytime talk show The Kelly Clarkson Show, Good Morning America, Yahoo!, Tamron Hall, Daily Mail TV, Reuters, and more.
-443 online placements from national and regional outlets
-Over 500 direct messages (DMs) to Guy Stanley Philoche’s Instagram handle

The attachments include direct links and videos to some of the top-tier media coverage that was secured on behalf of the campaign.