We Are Iowa - Local 5 News - WOI-TV5
Created the We Are Iowa brand, messaging and content creation plan.
Mission:
Take a neglected and directionless ABC affiliate in Des Moines, Iowa into modern digital & TV news generation to increase ratings and make it relevant to DMA market #65 consumers.
How:
I created the We Are Iowa brand and marketing communications plan by tapping into what it means to be an Iowan. They value authenticity, truth, understanding. I drilled down into what that looks like and recruited professional journalists with Iowa roots. The focus was not on crime and police blotters. It was about solutions and explaining complicated matters in easy to understand ways.
It looked softer with better visual storytelling. It looked like explaining issues and coming up with solutions.
I hosted workshops with the executive and corporate management team to explain and gain buy-in of the marketing communications plan.
I conducted hands-on training with all staff including how the sales team should speak about We Are Iowa.
I hired people with specific skill sets to carry out the brand mission and storytelling in every social media post, news story and web article.
Recruited and hired new anchor team.
Built & Designed new studio (video below)
Set standards of zero mistakes and zero misspellings during live newscasts with quality control check-ins before and after broadcast.
Concepted, directed and wrote new We Are Iowa Brand Awareness Promotions (click here to watch) through conversational dialogue, beautiful imagery and iconic Des Moines areas to break through the clutter.
Hyper-focused on Facebook and Twitter to build social media presence.
Combined all applications into one We Are Iowa app and drove weather as the main reason to download and use the app.
Created brand guidance and language documents that were portable and easily accessible to ensure brand standards were followed.
Results:
Facebook: Outstanding ORGANIC growth from 3,000 followers in 2014 to 100,000 followers in 2019 through incremental campaign spends, using the TV platform to drive followers.
TV: Increased ratings in every newscast time period by 1 rating point each ratings period for 4 years. Never before seen growth and ratings numbers drove revenue for the TV station.
Awards: We Are Iowa’s first-ever Edward R. Murrow Awards
We Are Iowa’s first-ever national Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Political Reporting
We Are Iowa’s first Emmy Awards in 25+ years
