Key Highlights
- Helped overcome the perception wild horses can’t be trained by telling “mustang makeover” stories
- Landed high-profile Washington Post story about purpose of the Mustang Heritage Foundation
- Tapped into the pop culture “makeover” craze to position Mustang Heritage Foundation training as an “extreme makeover” with positive outcomes
Services
Copywriting, Public Relations
Challenge
Since only 6% of Americans own horses and far less are actively seeking a new one, our team recognized we needed to put together a compelling marketing and public relations campaign that moved beyond the state borders of Kentucky where the first Extreme Mustang Makeover (EMM) was taking place and reached surrounding states to find well-qualified adopters. The Mustang Heritage Foundation puts on several Extreme Mustang Makeover events per year in its effort to educate the public about America’s wild mustang population problem and find newly trained horses permanent homes. The EMM visited Lexington, KY, with its first event with a goal of adopting out 100 horses.
Solution
- Created calendar postings on Lexington media websites advertising the event
- Drafted a human interest story about a couple training wild mustangs for the event in the neighboring state of West Virginia
- Identified the best media targets and story angles, and pitched the story to the Lexington and West Virginia markets as well as to horse trade publications and a few select national media reporters who cover human interest stories
- Expanded media targets to include nearby major metros (i.e. Washington Post) to attract interest from neighboring states
Results
The MHF opted to return to Lexington the next year based on outstanding results and partnered with Marketwave to handle the public outreach as well as other events in Ocala, FL and Fort Worth, TX. In the rampup to the 2018 Lexington event:
- Secured media coverage: The Washington Post, four TV news stories and four print stories, including a 4.5 minute segment on the Lexington ABC affiliate’s Good Day Kentucky
- Total views: 91,353 total views with 55,700 coming from TV news segments
- Social media engagement: 27 shares and 315 likes among posts by media outlets covering the EMM
- Adopted out 80 trained mustangs now working ranches, riding trails and being well cared for