1. Introduction
Getting college students to care about a sick little girl is one thing, but how do you get them
to take life-saving action three times a day? Every day? For an entire month? That was the
challenge faced by Cardinal PR, SUNY Plattsburgh’s student-run public relations agency
when they agreed to help Hannah’s Hope Fund win a $250,000 Pepsi Refresh Project grant.
Situation Analysis
Hannah’s Hope Fund was established when parents Matt and Lori Sames refused to give up
hope that their 4-year old daughter Hannah would die from a neurological disorder called
Giant Axonal Neuropathy or GAN. Hannah’s Hope Fund is a grass-roots, 501(c)3 non profit
organization with no paid staff. Its mission is to raise funds for research that will lead to a
treatment stopping this horrible disease in its tracks before it’s too late for Hannah and a
handful of others like her. Unlike childhood cancers or other terminal diseases, GAN is
considered an orphaned disease because it afflicts so few children that it’s not worth the
resources for medical research companies. Simply put, projected profits aren’t sufficient to
justify medical research.
Children with GAN are born and develop normally until they begin experiencing neurological
problems, usually with their feet, between 2-4 years of age. From there, GAN is similar to
other neurological disorders such as ALS. Slowly, these children are robbed of the ability to
walk, eat and eventually breathe by their mid-20s.
In just over two years, Hannah’s Hope Fund had raised close to $2 million for medical
research studies and was trying to secure additional funding for FDA clinical trials and
approval. For a small organization run by no one other than immediate family and friends,
this feat seemed insurmountable, until Pepsi created a social media based CSR program
called the Pepsi Refresh Project. Hannah’s Hope Fund had already trumped an August win,
beating out national health agencies with huge staffs and budgets to win its first $250,000
Pepsi Refresh grant. However, the medical team still needed to be paid to continue its
research and the approaching FDA studies would be costly. Attempting a second $250,000
Pepsi Refresh Project grant was unthinkable…or was it?

2. In the fall of 2010 that is exactly what SUNY Plattsburgh’s Cardinal Public Relations
(Cardinal PR) agreed to when they took on Hannah’s Hope Fund as an academic service-
learning client.
The Challenge
As the new school year was approaching, the excitement was just quieting down that
Hannah’s Hope Fund had beaten out much larger, national organizations in the health
category of the Pepsi Refresh contest. The community and Hannah’s Hope volunteers were
exhausted from the month long quest to recruit on-line voters and mobile texters, and quite
simply everyone from Plattsburgh to Albany was sick of hearing about Hannah’s Hope.
Cardinal PR’s challenge was to energize and engage an entirely new audience for the
November Pepsi Refresh contest. A new group of social media savvy constituents was
needed, one that hadn’t consumed their lives in August voting for Hannah three times a
day… namely college students.
Hannah’s Hope Fund would prove to be challenging to the Cardinal PR team in more
than one way. The biggest challenge was also the first, explaining to our primary public
(college students) exactly what Giant Axonal Neuropathy or GAN is. The team did this by
starting a Facebook group to help spread awareness about the disease. All key messages
regarding the disease had to be short and easily read, because as we know college students
have the attention span of a tweet. The tactics would need to be short and sweet, the
posters and flyers would need colorful fonts with amusing pictures and innuendos such as
“Did you do it today?” referring to the text-to-vote method the Pepsi Refresh Project uses.
Cardinal PR’s tactics certainly did their job because the campaign led to a second win in the
December Pepsi Refresh Project for Hannah’s Hope Fund, earning them an additional
$250,000 to go along with the original grant from the August win to total a half million
dollars to fund GAN research.
Research
Research for this campaign relied primarily on secondary research.
GAN (Giant Axonal Neuropathy)
The secondary research began with understanding GAN. GAN is a disease that affects the
nervous system in one’s body. The disease usually starts in early childhood and worsens
with time, eventually shutting down the entire body.
Hannah Sames
To understand GAN further Cardinal PR met with Matt Sames, the father of Hannah who’s
namesake is Hannah’s Hope Fund. Hannah is a seven-year-old girl with kinky, curly blonde

3. hair and an energetic personality. When Hannah was four years old she was diagnosed with
GAN, the youngest child ever diagnosed with GAN.
ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis)
GAN can be closely related to ALS. Cardinal PR thought it was important for its target
audiences to understand the connection between GAN and ALS because even those GAN is
extremely rare, a cure for GAN could eventually lead to a cure for ALS.
Target Audiences
 College Students
 High School Students
Primary Audience
SUNY Plattsburgh Students, Ages 18-24
Cardinal PR targeted the total student body of 5,859 students. Of the 5,859 students 57
percent are women while 43 percent are men. The student body is diverse with students
representing over 70 countries. The reason why we chose college students as a public was
because of their knowledge of social media and technology (25.8% of all Facebook users
are between 18 and 25 years old.)
Secondary Audience
Plattsburgh High School Students, Ages 14-18
Much like the SUNY Plattsburgh audience the high school audience is tech savvy and well
connected with social media making them a good target for the Pepsi Refresh Project.
Friends of SUNY Plattsburgh Students, Ages 18-24
We also reached out to friends of SUNY Plattsburgh students who attend other colleges and
universities primarily in New York State, but also around the country. Since college
students’ social media networks exist beyond the structural boundaries of Plattsburgh, we
engaged these existing relationships to help make Hannah’s Hope Fund go viral.
In addition, the education phase for this age group was quicker because we didn’t need to
spend the time explaining how to vote via text or Facebook, since college and high school
students were already adept with the technology.

4. Competing Factors Among Audiences
Like all college students, Plattsburgh students are targets for numerous social welfare
causes urging students for their support. During this semester just some of the competing
health organizations included: St. Jude’s Up Til’ Dawn, American Cancer Society’s Relay for
Life, and Colleges Against Cancer, which made it difficult to streamline attention to rally the
campus to support Hannah’s Hope.
Key Messages
Vote 3 Ways, every day to save Hannah!
Cardinal PR developed this slogan to influence and motivate the college audience to vote
three different ways everyday for the entire month of November to stay involved through
technology and social media.
Students could text vote, vote online through the Pepsi Refresh web page, and through the
Pepsi Facebook page.
You’re on Facebook and texting everyday anyway…and it doesn’t cost a cent.
We realized we weren’t asking students to do anything they weren’t already doing everyday
anyway. It would be easy to just take a minute while you’re already Facebooking or texting
to vote for Hannah…and besides, it’s free.
A Cure for GAN could lead to a cure for other diseases like ALS.
Cardinal PR thought it was important to inform the target audiences that discovering a cure
for GAN would not only help the small number of GAN sufferers, but the same research had
the potential to help cure other common neurological diseases as well.
Goal, Objectives, and Outcomes
Goal: To Have Hannah’s Hope Fund win the Pepsi Refresh 250K Grant for
November 2010.

5. Objective 1: To build a connection to Hannah’s Hope Fund among SUNY Plattsburgh and
local high school students during the Pepsi Refresh Contest throughout the month of
November.
Objective 2: To educate our audiences that their help finding a cure for the orphaned
disease GAN would cost them nothing except a few minutes of their time throughout the
month of November.
Objective 3: To motivate our audience to take action and vote all three ways, every day
during the Pepsi Refresh Contest throughout the month of November.
Strategy 1: Engage college and high school students via a social media campaign.
Rationale: While older social media audiences are growing, college and high school
students are still the largest audience for Facebook and have constant access to mobile
phones for texting.
Tactic 1: Develop a new Facebook page for Hannah’s Hope Fund and post current, regular
photos and updates about Hannah and other GAN children to make an emotional
connection with our audiences. Include information about the on-going medical research.
Provide direct links to the Pepsi websites for voting and detailed voting instructions for how
students can vote all three ways, every day.
Tactic 2: Produce, film and direct a video to post on YouTube and the Hannah’s Hope
Facebook page, as well as distribution via email and personal Facebook wall postings,
calling out to students to vote all three ways. The short film utilized campus opinion leaders
such as VP of Student Affairs, Bill Laundry, the Student Association president, and Greek
Life leaders.
Tactic 3: Create a Hannah’s Hope Twitter Account. Post daily comments and reminders on
Twitter to build a HHF Twitter following.
Outcomes: Over the course of the semester the Hannah’s Hope Fund Facebook
accumulated 4,408 fans. This tactic was our most valuable asset in the campaign. The
Hannah’s Hope Fund Facebook Page was also linked to the Twitter Page HH4GAN. This page
has accumulated 114 followers and played a role in spreading awareness about the
nonprofit. Our video was distributed to thousands of Facebook friends, email contacts and
on YouTube.
Strategy 2: Engage college and high school students via face to face personal encounters.
Rationale: We found that most college students were willing to help out, especially when
they realized how easy it was and we weren’t asking for a financial donation.

6. Tactic 1: Gave a short pitch and voting instructions at the premiere and all November
subsequent showings of the heavily anticipated Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part
1 movie. Got audiences to vote on the spot and asked them to remember to vote daily until
the end of November.
Tactic 2: Tabled in the Angell College Center, urging students to vote on the spot, and
distributed educational quarter sheets on Hannah’s Hope and ways to vote in the Pepsi
Refresh contest. Engaged students by blowing bubbles, which are incorporated in the
Hannah’s Hope Fund logo.
Tactic 3: Distributed educational quarter sheets on Hannah’s Hope and ways to vote in the
Pepsi Refresh contest at all major collegiate sporting events including basketball and hockey
games. In addition to engaging sports fans 1:1, announcements were made over the
loudspeaker during halftime breaks.
Tactic 4: Tabled at Sunday brunch at SUNY Plattsburgh’s main dining hall, where all on-
campus students needed to eat on weekends. Requested students vote on the spot as they
were waiting to swipe in.
Tactic 5: With instructor approval, Cardinal PR students made announcements before or
after their classes reminding students to vote.
Tactic 6: Distributed educational quarter sheets on Hannah’s Hope and ways to vote in the
Pepsi Refresh contest urging students to vote on the spot in residence halls in the evenings.
Tactic 7: Distributed business cards with instructions on how and where to vote at the mall
food court on Black Friday, coffee shops, and to college-aged students while standing in line
for rides at Universal Studios and Disney World.
Outcome: We reached thousands of moviegoers awaiting the start of the latest Harry Potter
film at close to 20 showings. In addition, literally thousands of students were engaged in
brief 1:1 personal conversations over the course of the month.
Strategy 3: Design visual communication materials to remind students to vote daily.
Rationale: Since this contest depended on an engaged audience throughout the entire
month, it was difficult to maintain the enthusiasm and momentum. The campaign needed
to be sustained via numerous strategies throughout November.
Tactic 1: Developed screen savers placed on all college computers in the computer labs
with information on how and where to vote.

7. Tactic 2: Put up lawn signs around Plattsburgh with the Hannah’s Hope logo and website
reminding passersby to vote.
Tactic 3: Cardinal PR students wrote reminders to vote for Hannah and the text vote
number on white boards in lecture halls
Tactic 4: Created and hung humorous posters with sexual innuendos of students saying
how many times a day and where they “did it”.
Outcome: It’s difficult to calculate the value of these tactics. We did receive a number of
comments about the posters, but have no hard numbers to substantiate their value. The
best we can say is they were a part of a successful campaign.
Strategy 4: Engage college and high school students via a traditional media campaign.
Rationale: Although social media and face to face encounters are the primary means of
reaching our audiences, a small, traditional media campaign would also be helpful to
reinforce our messages throughout the month.
Tactic 1: Submitted press releases to the student-run newspaper, Cardinal Points, as well as
the local newspaper, The Press-Republican.
Tactic 2: Created and aired three radio PSAs that ran on the student radio station WQKE FM,
WOKO FM, and WIRY AM.
Outcome: Similar to the above tactics, it’s difficult to place a value on these tactics as well.
The local newspaper ran several articles, although the college newspaper decided not to run
the story. WOKO, the station with the largest listening audience in our area ran several PSAs
as did the local AM station and the college station. Again, the best we can say is they were a
part of a successful campaign.
Evaluation
Since this was a student-run campaign, by the time the end of the semester came,
students had dispersed for winter break. As such, no formal evaluation was completed.
Throughout the month of November Hannah’s Hope Fund was always in first or second
place in the running to secure one of the two grants. Over Thanksgiving break when SUNY
Plattsburgh (and SUNY Albany) students were on break, the campaign lost momentum and
votes. By the time students returned, November was over and Hannah’s Hope had slipped
to third place, just out of the winners circle. Additionally, there were some outside
contingencies that resulted in Pepsi evaluating and revising the entry and voting rules for
the contest as requested by Hannah’s Hope supporters. After frustration, tears and anger
from the Sames family, Cardinal PR students and all Hannah’s Hope supporters, Hannah’s
Hope summoned the energy to enter the December contest as well. This decision was

8. undeniably the right one and proved that the work done in November was irrefutable.
During the month of December as students continued the campaign amidst finals and the
holidays, Hannah’s Hope finally with success and secured a second $250,000 grant!
For Cardinal PR, the overall experience was a valued one. Throughout the campaign,
Cardinal PR learned many valuable lessons, such as dealing with clients, communicating
with fellow practitioners and maintaining a professional image. Having the chance to work
with an actual client and helping them achieve their goal was the most rewarding feeling
imaginable.