Crisis response communications saves lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In spring of 2020, the coronavirus pandemic began to spread widely around the world. With little yet known about the disease, local health and government authorities were forced to scramble to communicate with their publics to do whatever they could to stop the spread and save lives.
Kane Communications Group was called upon by the Milwaukee County Unified Emergency Operations Center as the Centers for Disease Control were issuing statements about the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. At the time, the state of Wisconsin had not communicated anything to citizens about the pandemic, and no stay home or shelter-in-place orders were issued. The County needed to act quickly to do its part to keep citizens safe, despite the almost-hourly changing news and information about the pandemic. One thing we knew for sure was that limiting the movement of citizens and encouraging people to stay home (when it was safe and possible for them to do so), was the best we could do to slow the spread of COVID-19.
This campaign received the Honorable Mention award nationally in the Governmental or Public Affairs Media Relations Campaign category in Ragan’s 2021 Media Relations Awards competition.
Kane’s crisis response plan for Milwaukee County’s COVID-19 emergency won a Gold award in the 2020 MarCom Awards competition, one of the oldest, largest, most-respected creative competitions in the world.
SOLUTION
Within 48 hours of getting the call from the County, Kane's team came together and put together the entire crisis communications response plan - complete with creative concepts, paid/earned/owned and shared media strategies, a paid media buy and more.
We had messaging running in-market within days, with organizations such as the Milwaukee Brewers, Milwaukee Bucks, the Wisconsin Center District, local healthcare providers and more all aiding in sharing the word across digital, social and other communication channels. We trained ambassadors who put messages on social platforms, and engaged local media partners to provide added-value exposure to give back to the County.
RESULTS
The outpouring of support and fast response helped us to get word out quickly and keep our local health systems from becoming overwhelmed with patients. Because of these efforts, Milwaukee County's health care providers were able to care for the patient load coming in, ultimately saving lives of countless individuals in our community.
