Voices of Public Relations

May 17, 2011 by Melissa Snead

The PRSA 2011 Silver Anvil Awards podcast series features finalists from this year's program. The Silver Anvil Award recognizes complete public relations programs incorporating measurable and sound research, planning, execution and evaluation. These four areas represent the solid criteria by which senior practitioners judge each entry to ensure it meets the highest standards of performance in the profession.

 

Join Gary McCormick, APR, PRSA Fellow, as he speaks with Jamey Peters, senior vice president at Ketchum, about the “7-Eleven Unites America With Purple Slurpees” campaign.

 

Within moments of a President Obama press conference where asked if he would hold a "Slurpee Summit" as means for his first meeting with new Republican leaders, “Slurpee Summit” began trending high on Twitter. The Slurpee brand embodies having fun and connecting people. Riffing on the notion that America is divided into conservative "Red States" and liberal "Blue States," a new Slurpee flavor was created mixing red and blue flavors together, and "Purple for the People” was born.

 

Overall, the Slurpee Unity Tour visited 13 cities over a two-week period, driving press coverage on the local and national levels. On the social media front, fans of the Slurpee Facebook page increased from 1.5 million to more than 2 million in a two-week period, and Slurpee was aligned positively with the terms “Bipartisanship” and “Unity” in 95 percent of the Slurpee Summit and overall campaign coverage.