Maryland Food Bank
Critical PR during COVID-19 Response
Background
Maroon PR has been honored to work with the Maryland Food Bank for several years, but the global pandemic made 2020 a year of great need and great accomplishment for this vital organization. In a typical year, Maryland is home to nearly 1.5 Million people who don’t always know where their next meal is coming from. From March of 2020 through the end of the year, the Food Bank has distributed over 39 Million meals to Marylanders in need, an increase of 89% over 2019’s distribution rate.
BILLION Earned Media Impressions
MILLION Media Value
A critial part of our work in support of the Maryland Food Bank’s COVID-19 response was video storytelling in an effort to share important stories of activation across the state, the new faces of hunger, volunteer efforts, community partnerships, and more. Embedded below is a playlist of videos produced by Maroon PR.
Strategy
The need to tell the Maryland Food Bank’s story through earned, owned and paid public relations strategies was a critical element to their success. The general public and the business community needed to understand two key facts;
1. The need is great and not slowing down and;
2. The Maryland Food Bank are the experts in this space and they are built for this type of work.
Throughout 2020, Maroon PR stepped up efforts on media relations efforts and strategy by developing a “hunger brief” that presented key story lines to media every two weeks. The regular earned media coverage was coupled with the production of regular video content for Maryland Food Bank’s owned media platforms and two phases of paid media campaigns.
Results
In total, Maroon PR’s media relations efforts garnered over 6 Billion earned media impressions across the state including regular coverage from WBAL-TV, WBAL Radio, WBFF-TV, WMAR-TV, WJZ-TV, Baltimore Business Journal, Baltimore Sun, and more.
Our video production work resulted in over 20 videos telling unique stories of the Maryland Food Bank vast impact from clients to partner activation, volunteer work and more.
Through integrated PR efforts, the Maryland Food Bank garnered the attention needed by key stakeholders to reach their Phase 1 fundraising goal, and set the stage for Phase 2 and the need to raise $28 million by October 2021.
Here is a sampling of media hits secured by Maroon PR
throughout 2020:
