Every year, the Electrical Distributor Magazine (tED) holds a competition to recognize marketing efforts for companies within the electrical distributor and supplier industry. To enter, companies submit short essays about marketing feats they accomplished in the prior year with relevant images, videos, or other digital assets to one of 13 categories which are judged by a panel. In 2018, 50 entries were awarded tED Best of the Best awards, two of which went to Southwire. Southwire won in the Digital/Social Media Campaign and PR - Community Outreach.

 

Digital/Social Media Campaign: Contractor Solutions

Frequent readers of Southwire's blog and followers of our social channels will be very familiar with the 2017 Contractor Solutions Impossible vs Possible campaign. The Contractor Solutions team was developed to be a service for contractors to help make their jobsites safer and more efficient. The fully integrated digital campaign was launched on March 30, 2017 to bring awareness of how the Contractor Solutions' team of experts can be used for services such as consultation, product training, and jobsite support by having a different theme every month over one year. The landing page would change at the beginning of each month with new images and explored themes like Impossible vs Possible, Procrastination vs Preparation, and Excuses vs Solutions.

In total, 22 blogs were distributed which examined the challenges that Contractor Solution team members came across on jobsites and documented their solutions in concert with that month's theme. By the time the campaign finished, over 1.28 million people were reached on social media and saw the Contractor Solutions' message. To visit the Contractor Solutions landing page, please visit contractorsolutions.southwire.com. If you would like to read any of their blogs, you can check them out at southwire.com/newsroom/category/contractor-solutions/.

From the tED Judges: "Lots of companies say they have experts available, but Southwire pushed them out there with blog articles by these experts about real jobsite problems and their solutions."

 

PR-Community Outreach: Hurricane Harvey Disaster Relief

When Hurricane Harvey made landfall in August 2017, Project GIFT® volunteers began a disaster relief campaign to collect aid for the impacted in the Houston area. Using social media to raise as much awareness as possible, the call for needed supplies was distributed in the form of flyers, Facebook Live videos, and even drone footage of donations being collected and loaded into Southwire's semi-trucks.

Working in partnership with JD Martin Co. Inc., Crosspoint Church, and Southwire employees based in Houston, Texas, a fresh round of posts, flyers, and videos were shared through social media to give those affected a centralized point to receive disaster relief. Jordan Weathers, a Southwire employee who travelled to Texas as a Project GIFT volunteer, wrote a firsthand account in a three-part blog series about the destruction and hope he witnessed. The first entry of Jordan's Journal can be read here. Southwire's Corporate Communications team also collected footage and testimonials from the Hurricane Harvey Disaster Relief effort which can be viewed in this video. 

As a result of the campaign, 17 truck-loads worth of supplies were delivered and distributed in the Houston area. The call for aid reached over 360,000 on social media and the Jordan's Journal blog entries represented 25% of all blog traffic from September 1 to October 31.

From the tED Judges: "With this well-publicized and well-focused program, Southwire not only promoted itself, but also inspired volunteerism throughout the rest of the organization."

Congratulations to all 2018 Best of the Best award recipients, which are listed out in the August edition of tED magazine found here. For other updates about Southwire and the electrical manufacturing industry, stay tuned to southwire.com/newsroom.

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