Shell Houston Open – PR Case Study

Situation
With a recent venue change from The Woodlands to Humble, the Shell Houston Open wanted to recapture some of its earlier buzz and elevate excitement surrounding the tournament. Tournament organizers also wanted to raise awareness around the event’s philanthropic efforts, since the general public seemed unaware that the Shell Houston Open has raised almost $44 million for charity since 1992.

Approach
MMI created a new campaign with outdoor, print and online ads, all touting important aspects of the tournament such as the pedigrees of the players, philanthropic efforts, convenience of the new location and more. The tongue-in-cheek campaign used a play on words, giving common golf terms a double meaning. The campaign also began referring to the Shell Houston Open as “The SHO,” with ads building excitement leading up to “SHO Time.”

We created and used social media programs such a new blog, Twitter and Facebook accounts and a female ambassadors program to help spread the word about the event. We also refreshed the existing Shell Houston Open logo to include the tag line, “A Chance for Children.” To put faces to the charity dollars, we wrote beneficiary success stories which were distributed internally and externally through emails, posters, monthly e-newsletter and the Shell Houston Open website.

Results

  • The 2009 tournament received a lot of buzz with 15 of the top 20 players in the world participating, and also experienced its best online ticket sales ever.
  • Headlines across the world used the terms “SHO Time” or “The SHO.”
  • Much of the media coverage included charity messaging and every local TV station aired a charity feature in the weeks leading up to the tournament.
  • Publicity value totaled more than $12 million with over 300 million audience impressions worldwide.