An interview with Liz Peters

Liz Peters is the Public and Government Affairs Manager for CAA Manitoba. Before she joined CAA Manitoba, she used to work for the Official Opposition of Manitoba as the Director of Media Relations.  Liz is an alumnus of the PR & Marketing Management Diploma Program at the University of Winnipeg, but she is now a part-time instructor of the same program.

Liz shared the CAA Manitoba Worst Roads campaign with me. This is a national campaign run by seven CAA Clubs in Canada each year. This was CAA Manitoba’s second year running the campaign in 2013, and it lasted four weeks.

Liz started by creating a complete program plan, which included considerations for all marketing materials and PR/media opportunities, such as the objective of the campaign, a list of target audience, a tactical plan, key messages, a timeline, budget, media releases, media advisories, media conference plan, promotional plans, PSA, pitches to the editors and evaluation.

Goal setting was the number one task, and the objectives for CAA Manitoba were to:

1. Get people talking about the condition of roads, as public opinion would help to persuade the government to listen and make changes.

2. Provide various levels of government with CAA Manitoba's research, so they could consider them when making their plan for infrastructure in the coming years.

3. Increase the number of votes cast throughout the four-week campaign.

Liz conducted some research for the campaign – though she already had a lot of information in-house. The major part of work came from researching what different levels of government had done in regards to infrastructure investments, as it would affect the messaging.  Liz and her team also conducted a survey that went to 50,000 members asking for their personal thoughts about the condition of the roads and highways. She used the response as a hook for the entire campaign, as well as to persuade the government using public opinion.

In terms of promotion, CAA Manitoba used online banner ads on ChrisD.ca, placed ballot boxes in their branches, and put up posters on the door at various branches, used the #mbroads hastag on Twitter, put up photos of Worst Roads received from the public on their Facebook page, and also organized a few other activities. In addition, they sent out two email blasts to its members urging them to vote. The first one was sent to everyone, and the second one was segmented (dividing those who had already voted, and those who had not). The two emails were about two weeks apart.

The next stage was evaluation. Liz and her team would monitor the media; for example, they found the story was the 8th most commented story on the Winnipeg Free Press online version the day after the campaign was launched. They also looked at the number of likes on the pictures and comments posted on Facebook, and the retweets on Twitter (such as the retweet from the Mayor of Brandon). As well as a tweet to a Brandon City Councillor which turned into the editorial caricature in the Brandon Sun. In the evaluation process, Liz also identified the unusually cold April weather with snow shifted the focus from road preparation to flood preparation. It was not something you could plan, therefore it was important to remain flexible wherever was possible – and this is an important lesson for PR professionals.

 In addition to the above, Liz also evaluated the number of votes received during the campaign - which increased by 60 percent year on year. She and her team also conducted a survey about how people found out about the campaign. It turned out more people found out about the campaign through the mass media (television, radio and newspapers) than the CAA email that the members received. The evaluation process would help Liz to formulate the same campaign in 2014.