TIAA-CREF – PR Case Study

TIAA-CREF is a Fortune 100 financial services company that is the leading retirement system for people who work in the academic, research, medical and cultural fields. TIAA-CREF serves 3.6 million active and retired employees participating in more than 27,000 retirement plans and has $375 billion in combined assets under management (as of June 30, 2009).

Situation
For more than 40 years, TIAA-CREF has provided Houston’s academic, cultural and research communities with trusted retirement planning and financial advice. MMI was asked for a regional solution that would aid awareness and help generate contacts in Texas, with emphasis on Houston and the Texas Medical Center.

Approach
Working with client representatives in Dallas, Denver and New York, MMI developed a proactive public relations campaign. MMI helped TIAA-CREF identify media and sponsorship opportunities that would resonate with its target audience, creating a series of very creative events that were promoted with spectacular direct mail.

MMI also worked with TIAA-CREF to meet a need among medical educators and created the TIAA-CREF Distinguished Medical Educator Award. In its sixth year, the award has become one of the most prestigious honors given in the region and, in particular, in Houston. The reputation of the award comes from the ongoing commitment by TIAA-CREF, the stature of past recipients, and the steering committee, who are recognized as some of Texas’ most influential leaders in medical education.

“The TIAA-CREF Distinguished Medical Educator Award represents a prestigious recognition of these outstanding medical educators and makes an important statement regarding the importance of medical educators and medical education for our society,” said L. Maximilian Buja, M.D., Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

Results
TIAA-CREF cites the MMI campaign as directly responsible for:

  • Approximately $23.6 million in new sales from 2008 and 2009 events
  • 300 new, strong, targeted contacts with physicians and hospital leadership over the last seven years

Reaching more than 1,000,000 million people through media relations, the TIAA-CREF campaign was recently honored by the Public Relations Society of America (Houston chapter) with a Gold Excalibur Award.