How PR is Helping Grow the Game
By Savannah Prefontaine
A few weeks ago, I started a campaign to bring a rink to the city of Tuscaloosa with the help of a few University of Alabama students. Before starting this campaign, I knew it would be a lot of work to succeed and spread the word among UA faculty and students. I started it alongside co-founders Natalie Pizza and Maddie Radtke, who have been the most awesome teammates throughout this process. The use of public relations when leading this campaign has been quite beneficial in allowing it to be successful.
It all began when I wrote an article for the UA CHF Hockey’s website about the idea of a rink, and it blew up on its Instagram. A few months later, I conducted a survey for the UA student body to collect data to see how many students would come to a game if the rink were on campus compared to how many usually come to our rink in Pelham. A week after the survey went out, I was amazed that over 1,600 students filled out the survey and answered “yes, I would come to a UA hockey game if the rink were closer.” I then brought the campaign idea to Radtke and Pizza; they wanted to help immediately.
This process can be stressful sometimes, but when I started it, I knew I had to have people assist me with everything. I’m known for wanting to do everything myself, but when it comes to running this campaign, I realized that teamwork is always the best idea when wanting to be successful. We created a form to ask students if they wanted to be involved, whether it was through networking with donors, creating social media content, or helping out in any way moving forward. We now have a team of over 20 individuals ranging from players on the D1 and D2 hockey teams to women who want to start a women’s hockey team, figure skaters, and even alumni. Having a team to increase the awareness of this campaign has benefitted us tremendously because of the number of ideas brought forward and the amplitude of work getting done quicker. We were able to receive opinions from all over, which makes this campaign as strong as it is now.
Networking has been essential to this campaign so that we can reach out to known names in Alabama and the hockey communities. When I started it, I was surprised to see that Kristen Saban (Nick Saban’s daughter) reached out to me to tell me that she was proud of our work and wanted to help in any way possible. Within PR, big names are always helpful when wanting to spread the word about something due to the amount of people paying attention to what is happening in their lives. Kristen Saban created a video for us while she was in Alberta, Canada, stating how an ice rink would benefit Tuscaloosa, which we then posted on our Instagram. This video helped us spread the word between her followers and our current followers, which allowed us to gain more people following our campaign. We have also had numerous big names within the NHL industry reach out to assist us, including Tampa Bay Lighting CEO Steve Griggs and Nashville Predators Director of Media Sara Giles. The use of our connections within our drive to get a rink on campus has helped us spread the word tremendously.
We still have a lot to improve on, but our success so far has been outstanding. Leading this campaign has shown me that it can be stressful sometimes, but when you have the right team to count on, you can always trust the process. I have learned from this team that ideas can sprout everywhere, and every opinion matters when deciding what to get done because it creates an even better and more significant statement. I can’t wait to see where this campaign takes us and if it allows a rink to be built in the Tuscaloosa area.
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