Date: To: From: Re: July 6, 2016 UHS – Arbour Health System Edelman UPDATED: Issues Management Prep – Digital Recommendations and Budget As we near the publishing of the BuzzFeed article, we first want to ensure that the leadership of UHS understands the nature and reach of BuzzFeed’s investigative journalism. BuzzFeed Overview Founded in 2006, BuzzFeed began as a company focused on covering content that had gone viral on the internet. This included videos, articles, and memes. The site soon became known for their “Top 10” lists, online quizzes, and comedic commentary on pop-culture, all in an internet savvy tone. Because BuzzFeed is a site that primarily focuses on humor and reaching millennials, Corporate America’s predisposition to dismiss the site’s reporting capability is understandable. However, this would be a considerable mistake. All metrics indicate that the site is an internet juggernaut. In the past year, BuzzFeed had 5.5 billion global visits – nearly 180 million unique (or distinct individual) visits in the last month alone. USA Today reports, BuzzFeed has become a “journalistic force” with a newsroom of 170 reporters, including top hires Ben Smith (formerly of Politico), Lisa Tozzi (formerly of the New York Times), and Pulitzer Prize winner Mark Schoofs (formerly of ProPublica). To be clear, the site’s foray into investigative journalism must not be ignored. Topics have included money laundering, government failures in the U.S., and illegal business deals. Alex Campbell’s series on battered women sentenced to prison for failing to prevent their boyfriends or spouses from abusing their children earned him a nomination for the prestigious Michael Kelly Award, which is awarded for the fearless pursuit of truth in journalism. Below are three case studies illustrating BuzzFeed’s investigative reporting capabilities and impacts to the companies or organizations covered by the site: Digital Recommendations In order to be best-positioned from a digital standpoint, and to manage and respond to potential traction generated by the BuzzFeed article, we recommend the following digital preparation tactics: 1. Develop a dark site. It is critical to have a platform that serves as an information hub to set the record straight and to share your company’s direct response to an issue. If UHS doesn’t share its point of view, it will be assumed or assigned to you by external voices which poses an additional reputation risk. The project will include the following phases: Campaign Development and Discovery: Edelman will coordinate with UHS to audit all available materials, and develop an information architecture (content outline) for the site. We will solidify key audiences, desired user experience, content priorities, and technical requirements. Visual Design: Edelman will collaborate with UHS to confirm mandatory design requirements and determine an applicable base template. The template will be adapted and customized to meet the defined requirements. Site Development: Edelman will implement the template ensuring it is built on an easy-to-use and flexible Content Management System (CMS). During this phase, UHS will determine and procure hosting and domain. Quality Assurance (QA) and Preparation for Launch: We follow a rigorous QA process to ensure the site is operating as desired and that it performs well cross-browser and cross-device in order to be ready to launch if/when the need arises. Launch: Once the site is prepared, it can be launched quickly. It will be critical for UHS decision makers to have a process in place in advance of an issue occurring that outlines when and during what circumstances a microsite should be launched. Proposed Schedule: Week 1: Selection and approval of base WordPress template, WPEngine account setup, content planning, URL recommendations, and branding guidelines. Week 2: Template branding and loading, domain set-up. Weeks 3 – 4: Training, content integration, testing, and preparation for launch. Assumptions  Edelman will: o o o o o o  Collaborate with UHS to determine an applicable WordPress template. Adapt and customize the template to meet the requirements outlined above. Procure the (WPEngine) hosting account. Procure necessary domains/URLs. Implement the template on the WPEngine account. Train UHS staff to administer site content. UHS will: o Develop and implement all necessary content.  If the timeline is postponed or delayed after July 29, 2016, the price of the project could increase to cover the extension of the engagement beyond the specified period.  This scope does not account for site support past July 29, 2016. Edelman recommends a separate maintenance scope to account for hourly support post-launch. If a maintenance scope isn’t in place by July 29, 2016, then Edelman will need to transition the hosting account and any necessary assets to UHS.  Existing UHS/Arbour branding will be leveraged for the site design.  Our recommended hosting provider (WPEngine) is a third-party service which we can’t guarantee the performance or pricing of.  Customization of the WordPress template will primarily be limited to adding required functionality and/or removing extraneous content.  Content development (text, images, videos, etc.) is not included in this estimate. Budget: $31,280 fee (OOPs: WordPress template, $100; Hosting and set-up, $99/month) 2. Create optimized social content and response protocol. In conjunction with understanding how conversation is occurring online, UHS will also need to be prepared to evaluate its role in the conversation. Creating a social media response protocol in advance will allow UHS to understand if and when the company responds to questions or comments on social media and with what messaging. Additionally, all messaging should be optimized for use on social. This will allow UHS to be nimble in its response and have messages ready to go in the correct format and length to distribute on social channels. Budget: $7,500 3. Search engine marketing (SEM) and paid content promotion. Effective online communication during an issue or crisis requires getting your message to the right people at the right time. Search engine marketing, such as a Google advertisement, would allow UHS to set up a campaign based on issue-specific keywords so that anyone searching for information would immediately find UHS’s response as the first result on the page. If UHS launches a dark site as part of its response strategy, this approach would also serve to direct search traffic to the microsite. Additionally, we recommend the same approach with social media content. Using paid promotion, posts from UHS’s social channels can be amplified and targeted to the right audiences to ensure UHS’s response is visible on social media. Budget: $5,000 recommended maximum for OOPs; $2,000 fee for set-up, ad copy development, and keyword targeting adjustments for 2-week period 4. Create content that is visual and shareable. Visual content is king online, particularly on social media. Channels such as Facebook and Twitter prioritize visual content (that includes an image, video, GIF or infographic) over text-only content. Depending on the information UHS needs to share via a microsite or on social media, an infographic or image with a statement would allow the company to set the record straight in a dynamic, shareable way. Budget: $5,000 per simple infographic (2-3 recommended); $1,500 - $2,000 per image/copy or GIF (shareable meme) sized for each social media platform (2-3 recommended) 5. Bolster issue-specific monitoring. To properly assess and then devise a response strategy, it is critical to have a clear pulse on how conversation is trending. This will allow UHS understand the volume of conversation, who is involved, and whether any misinformation is circulating that needs to be corrected. Monitoring reports provide frontline intelligence that should be used to inform your response strategy. Preparing the monitoring process in advance will allow UHS to begin monitoring in real-time as soon as necessary. Budget: Ranging from $11,400 for low estimate of light coverage to $31,400 for high estimate of heavy coverage for four weeks (previously shared in June 24, 2016 memo re: online monitoring recommendations) Edelman APPENDIX: Case Studies National Mentors Holding Article: In February 2015, BuzzFeed published a substantive report titled “Fostering Profits,” which detailed the operations of National Mentors Holding, the largest for-profit foster care company in the United States. BuzzFeed reporters expertly laid out numerous cases where children were sexually abused by foster parents, yet the company took inexplicably long periods of time to remove the children from these tragic circumstances. The piece also covers the deaths of six children who were in the care of Mentors foster parents. Further, the reporters also exposed the fact that in an effort to increase profits, the company was cutting corners on expensive screening services that ensured the safety of the children. In fact, several people who were foster parents had backgrounds of drug and sexual abuse. Outcome: In June 2015, the United States Senate Committee on Finance sent a six-page letter requesting detailed information about the firm’s business practices and treatment of the thousands of children in its care. The letter, which was signed by Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) cites “deeply disturbing” news articles (BuzzFeed) that focus on “what appear to be serious deficiencies” in the company’s foster care operations. One week after the letter was sent to the company, National Mentors Holding announced that it was suspending foster care services in nearly half the states it operated in across the U.S. International Tennis Tournaments/Players Article: In January 2016, BuzzFeed and the BBC co-published a report titled “The Tennis Racket” detailing allegations of match-fixing at the highest echelons of international tennis. Files obtained by, and reported on by the BBC and BuzzFeed examine allegations that “the sport’s governing bodies have been warned repeatedly about a core group of 16 players – all of whom have ranked in the top 50 – but none have faced any sanction.” The piece goes on to investigate the actions of these players and their interactions with gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy. The article states “BuzzFeed News began its investigation after devising an algorithm to analyze gambling on professional tennis matches over the past seven years. It identified 15 players who regularly lost matches in which heavily lopsided betting appeared to substantially shift the odds – a red flag for possible match-fixing.” Outcome: The international response from “The Tennis Racket” was swift – from both players and governing national bodies. British Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, John Whittingdale, called for tennis authorities to "investigate very quickly and openly" the "serious accusations" about match fixing. He further called on Wimbledon and the Lawn Tennis Association in England and Wales to conduct investigations into the match-fixing allegations. In February 2016, the British Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee called leading tennis officials to appear and explain what they are doing to address match-fixing within the sport. Lastly, numerous players (including Andy Murray and Novak Djokovic) either called for transparency in the investigations or detailed their own stories of being approached to fix matches. United States Department of Labor/H-2 Guest Worker Program Article: In December 2015, BuzzFeed published an article titled “All You Americans Are Fired,” which explores the numerous controversies surrounding the H-2 Guest Worker Visa. The story details numerous instances where companies have gone through extraordinary instances to fire American workers and replace them with foreign nationals who work longer hours for significantly less money. The article states “Based on Labor Department records, court filings, more than 100 interviews, inspector general reports, and analyses of state and federal data, has found that many businesses go to extraordinary lengths to skirt the law, deliberately denying jobs to American workers so they can hire foreign workers on H-2 visas instead.” Outcome: While the H-2 visa issue continues in controversy, the BuzzFeed article had a significant impact on the national conversation and figured prominently in national reporting on the issue, including coverage by NPR’s Marketplace, and ProPublica. The article also won BuzzFeed a national award from the American Society of Magazine Editors public interest category.