A Perfect Storm in Pasadena

I am currently in Los Angeles working with the Donate Life Rose Parade float committee on developing and executing social media strategies. The Donate Life Rose Parade float is the organ and tissue donation and transplantation industry's single largest public relations effort. In 2009 alone, the award-winning float and its participants were the subject of 300 media stories, spreading the donate life message of hope and inspiration to millions of Americans. But the national transplant waiting list continues to grow. More than 100,000 Americans are awaiting an organ transplant. The float wants - and needs - to do more.

Within the next few weeks, the Donate Life Rose Parade float will unveil an online community for past float riders and floragraph families to assist the committee in offering families the opportunity to have a personal, dedicated rose on the float.

The Donate Life float blog will also debut, sharing stories from float design and construction to the final decorating day. Supporters can follow the extraordinary journey of a Rose Parade float and those intimately involved in its execution.

These social media strategies will be integrated into the current media strategy of pitching float rider and floragraph family stories to national, regional and local print, television and radio media. Links to story placement will be sent out to float supporters via Twitter and will also be present on the float's to-be-constructed Facebook page.

This is a true experiment of how the use of social media can enhance an already successful public and media relations strategy. I will be chronicling the successes and failures of this project in this blog to illustrate how one nonprofit entity utilized social media.

Will the combination of "old" and "new" media strategies create a proverbial "lake effect" for the Donate Life float? Will these strategies inspire more Americans to become organ and tissue donors? I think the Donate Life float has all the ingredients to create a perfect media storm in Pasadena.