Hanna Trailer

12/07/18
JAMS 347

Final Project Campaign Plan: Northwest Maritime Center

Client overview

The Northwest Maritime Center (NWMC) is a nonprofit in Port Townsend,

Washington focused on keeping the maritime heritage of the surrounding community

alive and engaging. In practice, this means providing resources to interested parties

regarding education, recreation, and professional development in nautical fields. These

educational resources extend beyond the immediate community into international corners

of the maritime industry through industry insights provided by experts at the festivals and

symposiums the NWMC puts on, which are attended by people from all corners of the

world.

The stated mission of the NWMC is “to engage and educate people of all

generations in traditional and contemporary maritime life, in a spirit of adventure and

discovery. We’re many things, and at our core we are a campus that uses powerful

maritime experiences to educate, inspire people to adventure, and celebrate our maritime

culture. We do it for our own love of boats, in service to the local community and

maritime industry, but mostly because regardless of the subject, the sea is the most

powerful teacher we know.” (Northwest Maritime Center, 2018)

The organization was founded in 1978 following the success of the first Port

Townsend Wooden Boat Festival. Today, it operates a maritime library and a boat shop
(out of which local shipwrights and students work every day), as well as a wooden boat

chandlery. They offer several educational programs across the age spectrum, including

Learn to Sail programs, the High School Racing Club, and community rowing programs

(that have grown into multiple rowing clubs).

The NWMC building opened for business at the Wooden Boat Festival in 2009

and currently houses the offices of the organization and an event space that members of

the public can rent.

Apart from the services it provides, the NWMC generates revenue through

donations, sponsorships from over 40 local businesses, and individual memberships. The

organization’s main website offers three paths to donation; one to make a donation to the

overall organization, one for donations specifically for women’s educational maritime

programs, and one for donating stocks and bonds. The website explains the tiered

membership structure with prices and benefits listed clearly for the reader to assess.

The NWMC is a stable pillar in its home community, but is looking toward

regional expansion in the coming years, which provides an opportunity to utilize public

relations to accomplish that goal.

External environment

Port Townsend, Washington is the main environment that currently affects the

NWMC. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, it is home to 9,551 people.

Approximately thirty percent of them are over the age of sixty-five and approximately

twenty percent are at or under the age of eighteen. (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017) These
statistics are important to the NWMC, because many of its programs are designed for

children and young adults.

One of the biggest stakeholder groups in the NWMC is local parents, who benefit

from the educational programs and community that the NWMC works to provide. For

this reason, it is critical to the NWMC that people continue to raise their families in or

around Port Townsend.

Another factor that impacts the environment of NWMC is the flow of tourism

through Port Townsend. Travel in the area benefits the NWMC, because it offers

increased revenue in the chandlery and exposure to new potential members and future

event attendees.

A more broad, chaotic, wild card of a possible factor in continued operations of

the NWMC is the possibility of war or otherwise categorized military engagement. This

affects the NWMC, because there are several military bases in the immediate vicinity,

including the Bangor nuclear base at the Hood Canal. Bangor houses about a quarter of

the United States nuclear arsenal, which makes it a potential target for future attacks

(Bienaime, 2015). Furthermore, any political conflict that involved the Northwest could

restrict travel and potentially access to the water.

SWOT Analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats)

One of the NWMC’s strengths is the completeness of its Facebook page. The

page provides an email address and phone number with which to contact the

organization, and it goes beyond the basics of social media expectations to function as a

preview of, or even a surrogate for, the NWMC’s website. On the Facebook page,
members of the public can find information regarding what the Maritime Center does, a

list of upcoming events, and photos and videos from past events and programs.

Additionally, the page provides parking information and a Google maps visual display

built into the page beside the listed street address. Positive reviews are prominently

displayed, as well as the organization’s average rating of 4.8 out of 5.

The NWMC recently acquired a long-standing sailing publication called 48º

North through donation by the magazine’s owners. This is a free publication, which

means that it is not a source of income for the organization, but it presents a platform

through which the Maritime Center can publicize their events. Additionally, the magazine

offers an easy distribution medium for surveys related to community relations and things

of that nature. According to an article in the Peninsula Daily News, acquisition of 48º

North stands to give the NWMC “exposure to a larger audience, helping [their] goal of

becoming a regional entity.” (McMacken, 2018)

A weakness of the NWMC is the sheer amount of work put on its employees. The

organization does not currently have any interns or employees of that approximate level,

which means that it is not operating as efficiently as it could be. Given the number of

events, programs, and miscellaneous activities that the NWMC puts on, it’s apparent that

it could save a considerable amount of energy and time by taking on additional hands to

help out.

An additional weakness is the NWMC’s lack of programs targeting college-

aged—approximately 18 to 23 years old—people (Northwest Maritime Center, 2018).

The summer programs are geared to 10-16 year olds, the year-round programs target high

school and middle school classes, and the adult programs can cost upwards of 100
dollars, which prices-out young adults who have not had time to accrue that kind of

disposable income (Northwest Maritime Center, 2018).

A recently developed opportunity for the organization is the NWMC travel

programs. In 2018, the organization began offering group trips to Norway and Tasmania.

They advertise the second year of those trips in 2019, as well as trips to the British Virgin

Islands and Brest, France. Implementation of these programs is risky, because it costs a

great deal to customers, but it could turn into one of the bigger ticket services that

NWMC provides.

The region in which the NWMC operates is home to many maritime non-profits.

Two such entities are Northwest Seaport Maritime Heritage Center (NSMHC), and Sea

School Northwest (SSN), which operate out of Lake Union and Aberdeen, respectively.

These two organizations share common goals with the NWMC such as preserving the

maritime culture of the area (mainly NSMHC) and educating the mariners of tomorrow

(mainly SSN). Neither organization offers as many services or opportunities as the

NWMC, but both need to be kept in mind when considering how to expand the NWMC’s

reach.

These other organizations are threats in terms of competing for the same pool of

potential donors, but they also represent opportunities to build a base of support—or at

least recognition—in both of their areas of operation. By building collaborative

relationships with them both, the Maritime Center can expand its reach of influence.

Another opportunity that NWMC stands to capitalize on is in the sheer workload

necessary to carry out the events and programs. By bringing in local youths as interns, for
school credit or some other kind of compensation, the NWMC could positively impact a

greater number of Northwest kids and decrease workload on current full-time employees.

Opportunity Statement

The NWMC is already stable and well regarded in its community. However, it

must look to the future in order to maintain that status, and hopefully improve it. The best

way to ensure a future for the organization, while expanding the influence it already has,

is to build stronger relationships with the young adults in Jefferson County through

internship or job opportunities.

Target Audience

The target audience for this would be people in Jefferson County between the

ages of 18 and 25. This spans the most common last ages a person is in high school and

college. Specifically, people interested in maritime culture and jobs. An example of

people in this age group who would fit comfortably within the target public is people who

have volunteered at NWMC events. NWMC utilizes volunteer work from local youths

during festivals and other events, and making a more long-term professional base would

be a small step from there, especially if the volunteers themselves were interested.

People in the position of training for their future in academic settings will likely

be more interested in internship opportunities that will provide meat for their resume and

references to call upon in future job searches. The people to contact are students at

universities on the Olympic Peninsula—to be discussed in greater detail later—who value

collaboration and the history of the area. Professional aspirations are flexible, because the

NWMC uses skillsets of all kinds—such as event coordination, teaching, and

accounting—but an intern with the NWMC should be able to get behind the mission of

the organization.

The Plan

Goal

The goal is to expand and strengthen the maritime center’s relationships with

young adults on the Olympic Peninsula through implementation of an internship

program. We will pursue this goal, because it dual purpose: it diminishes the workload of

existing employees—a noted weakness of the organization—and increases regional

interest in the organization within an as yet underutilized demographic (18-25 year olds).

The internships in question would begin the first week of June in 2020, with the

application deadline being April 20th and decision reveals May 10th. This gives the

organization time to carry out the objectives, strategies, and tactics to follow.

Interns would be placed in the following departments: event planning,

communications, development (which handles fundraising), and education. Their daily

tasks would vary by supervisor, but would serve the overall purpose of streamlining team

coordination and community communication. Due to the prevalence of online

communication and collaboration already in place at the Maritime Center—through the

use of Google sheets, docs, and drive—it is probable that some interns could work from

home many days of the week.

Objectives
 This plan applies the Diffusion of Innovations Theory, which concerns how

people make decisions (Weidman, 2018). Diffusion of Innovations Theory lays out a

series of steps through which people go when weighing the costs and benefits of taking

on something new in their lives. First, a person encounters an idea in the awareness step

(Weidman, 2018). The next step, interest, is a person becoming interested in an idea

(Weidman, 2018). These two steps are critical to the success of the following campaign,

mostly because no one can participate in an internship they do not know about, and

because awareness does not automatically lead to interest. The following step, evaluation,

is when a person evaluates how useful this idea is to them (Weidman, 2018). During this

step, a person weighs the pros and cons of adopting this idea into their life (Weidman,

2018). If the pros outweigh the cons, or look like the might, the person moves on to the

next step: trial (Weidman, 2018). Trial is when this person experiments with this idea in

some form of practical application with others (Weidman, 2018). Finally, if trial goes

well, the person moves on to the adoption step, in which they embrace the idea

(Weidman, 2018). The following objectives, strategies, and tactics apply Diffusion of

Innovations through understanding how to address the steps a person follows in decision-

making.

Objective One is to increase awareness of the NWMC 2020 internship program

among 18-25 year olds on the Olympic Peninsula over the course of the next 17 months.

This objective is informational—meaning it focuses on bringing exposure and awareness

to our internship program (Page & Parnell, 2019)—and addresses the awareness and

interest steps of Diffusion of Innovation.

 Objective Two is to raise interest in our internship program among the

aforementioned target public over the next 17 months. This objective is motivational—

meaning it intends to inform and entice the audience into changing behavior (Page &

Parnell, 2019), which is more complicated to implement, but easier to quantifiably

measure—and addresses the trial, evaluation, and adoption steps of Diffusion of

Innovation.

Strategies

The first strategy for Objective One is to contact, via phone and email, nearby

colleges and universities (specifically Evergreen College, Peninsula College, Western

Washington University, University of Washington, and Seattle Pacific University) and

form partnerships with their career development offices. This strategy allows us to put

our potential audience in the thousands and opens up opportunities for exploration in

different tactics for each school.

The tactics that can be applied at all schools with whom we build a partnership

are creating an email subscription list for information on the upcoming internship

opportunity, and creating brochures to be distributed through career development offices.

An email subscription list gives the organization a way to measure potential applicants to

the program as well as a means to contact them. A brochure can serve to pique interest in

the program through visual aids, basic information about the program, and contact

information about the organization.

Students would be given the opportunity to join the email subscription list in

many ways. First, we would contact people who have volunteered at NWMC events in
the past and offer the information to them. Next, we would communicate the existence

of—and means to join—the email list on the aforementioned brochures, in coming issues

of 48° Degrees North, on the Maritime Center social media, and the internship page on

the NWMC website, which will be addressed in a tactic yet to come.

Tactics that can be applied with the cooperation and collaboration of some

schools are hosting an information session and having a booth at a job fair.

An in-person formation session would entail one or two employees visiting the

school and giving a brief overview of what the organization does and what an internship

would look like, at the end of which they would answer questions. Due to the time and

effort necessary to carry out such an event—approximately an hour for the event itself

and at least two days to prepare—this tactic is only applicable to schools within three

hours by car and ferry, such as, University of Washington, Seattle Pacific University,

Evergreen College and Peninsula College. A possible medium through which to deliver

this tactic is video, because visiting schools through video chat offers flexibility to the

employees in that they could remain in their office. Additionally, it narrows the audience

to potentially more interested parties, because an employee in education could video-visit

a class full of future teachers.

Having a booth at a job fair has the same geographical restrictions as holding an

information session, but is less preparation-intensive on NWMC employees. Both of

these tactics are perfect opportunities to deploy brochures, and the latter is perfect for

acquiring emails for the subscription.

The second strategy for Objective One is to use electronic communication to raise

awareness of the 2020 internship program. This strategy is important to use in

conjunction with the first strategy, because it prioritizes communicating directly with

students rather than with schools. This strategy uses entirely owned media—the website,

48° North, Instagram and Facebook, and the email list—to reach the target public.

The first tactic is to create a page on the existing NWMC website dedicated to the

internship program. This is arguably the most important tactic, because it offers

opportunities for applying further tactics, and because it means the internship program

will appear in Internet searches for internship opportunities. Information to be housed on

the website—which will be addressed further in later tactics—includes a basic overview

of where interns could be placed and a frequently asked questions section addressing

questions the organization anticipates. For example: how many hours a week would I be

working?

The second tactic is to deploy the email list. Once every other month for the next

17 months send an email to all subscribers informing them of upcoming informational

events, updates to the program, reminders of the application deadline, and other

information as it becomes relevant. The publication schedule of this tactic is set at a once

every other month limit so as to avoid inundating potential applicants with excessive

information and driving them away.

The third strategy for Objective One is to obtain earned media coverage—

specifically by local news outlets—of the internship program’s inception in the next three

months. The deadline is set such that it gives the organization enough time to flesh out

the program such that a journalist would have something to write about it.

The first tactic for the third strategy is to send a news release to Peninsula Daily

News. This publication was chosen, because it publishes more frequently and reaches a
broader audience than its counterpart the Port Townsend Leader, as well as having a

reputation for greater accuracy. The journalist to be contacted is Jeannie McMacken, as

she is the most frequent writer of NWMC-related news.

The second tactic is to contact KPTZ, Port Townsend’s local radio station with a

news release written specifically for them and to request an appearance to discuss the

internship program. The radio host to contact is Steve Evans, because he runs a news

show called Compass, which covers all sorts of local news (KPTZ, 2018).

The first strategy for Objective Two addresses the evaluation step of Diffusion of

Innovations Theory. It is to provide inside information into what an internship would

entail for a participant. This should help both streamline the cost-benefit analysis of a

potential applicant, while—without hiding or disguising the costs—highlighting all of the

benefits.

The first tactic to apply utilizes the website, created in previous tactics. Under the

information relating to each department in which an intern might be placed, put the

professional contact information, email and/or office phone, of the person who would

supervise them if they were placed there. This way, applicants can assess the

environment in which they would be working, put a human identity to the organization

for which they might be working, and get practical information about what kind of job

they could be signing up for.

The second tactic is to increase production of Instagram content relating to day-

to-day office life at NWMC. Janis Teruggi Page and Lawrence J. Parnell asserted in their

book Introduction to Strategic Public Relations that “Instagram goes hand in hand with

visual storytelling.” (Page & Parnell, 2019 p. 199) This tactic uses Instagram’s noted
storytelling strength to showcase the welcoming environment in the office and the natural

beauty surrounding it. To carry out this tactic the organization must post one photo per

week with the hashtag #NWMClife showing the daily perks of working at the NWMC.

For example, the office is right on the water—specifically Point Hudson—so some

possible photos would be watching an especially lovely sailboat go by—such as

Adventuress or, if we were very lucky, the Lady Washington—or waves crashing on the

dock.

The second strategy for Objective Two is to incentivize inquiries regarding and

subsequent applications to the internship program through showcasing the things the

NWMC can offer that few other organizations can or will. This is critical to addressing

the evaluation step of Diffusion of Innovations as it relates to people looking at

internships, because likely they are looking at more than one. Being able to make their

research into our internship easier and more rewarding will set us apart from much of the

competition.

The first tactic for the second strategy of Objective Two is to offer potential

applicants the opportunity to tour the facility and spend some time shadowing a potential

supervisor at the office, while offering reimbursement to the first 10 prospective

applicants who travel to visit the NWMC via public transportation. Between buses and

ferries, the cost per applicant should be approximately $20 (Jefferson Transit,

Washington State Department of Transportation, 2018). This tactic would be

communicated primarily through the email list, as well as the website.

The second tactic for this strategy is to take potential applicants out for a day sail,

in a program called Come Sail With Us! This would cost the NWMC nothing at all, given
that they have plenty of in-house boats from which to choose, and would likely catch

potential applicants attention. This tactic is the most relevant to both the strategy it serves

and the mission of the organization, because it shows an opportunity that few

organizations will give while embracing the spirit and primary focus of the NWMC.

Evaluation

The techniques for evaluating the success of this campaign fall into the categories

of counting participatory indicators and assessing the enjoyment of participants. For the

former, we will be using digital analytics to count how many Instagram followers, email

subscribers, and website visitors we gained over the course of the campaign, in addition

to how many potential applicants emailed or called the organization. Furthermore, we

will be counting how many potential applicants participated in our Come Sail With Us

tactic and, most importantly, how many actually applied. Gaining 1,000 Instagram

followers and 150 email subscribers will mark success for tactics relating to those media.

The mark of success for the internship webpage will be 300 visits. For program inquiries

the bar is 60 individuals contacting the NWMC between email and phone calls combined.

20 participants in the Come Sail With Us program and 50 applicants for internships will

mark success for Objective Two. For the latter, we will be surveying the interns and

interviewing their supervisors. This will allow us to assess which tactics were directly

successful in gaining applicants as well as learning what we can do to make the program

better for future participants.

Example Questions for Intern Survey

 1. On a 1 - 10 scale (higher = better) please rate your experience working with your
direct supervisor:
a. Please elaborate
2. On a 1 - 10 scale please rate your experience working in the Maritime Center
office:
. Please elaborate
3. Do you plan to re-apply for this program?
. Please explain why/why not
4. How did you hear about the program?
5. Why did you pursue this internship?

6. Why did you accept this internship?

Example Questions for Supervisors

1. How did having an intern affect your daily work?

2. Would you recommend bringing back the intern you had?

3. What do you think we could do to improve the program next year?

References

Bienaime, P. (March 13, 2015). Military dolphins help defend the world’s largest
stockpile of nuclear weapons. Business Insider.
https://www.businessinsider.com/the-worlds-largest-stockpile-of-nuclear-
weapons-is-defended-by-dolphins-2015-3

Jefferson Transit. (2018). Fares & Passes.

https://jeffersontransit.com/fares-passes/

KPTZ Community Radio. (2018). Compass/Steve Evans.

https://kptz.org/compass-steve-evans/

McMacken, J. (August 6 2018). Northwest Maritime Center to be publisher of free

publication. Peninsula Daily News.
 http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/news/northwest-maritime-center-to-be-
publisher-of-free-publication/

Northwest Maritime Center. (2018). Our Mission.

https://nwmaritime.org/about/

U.S. Census Bureau. (2017). Population Estimates Program.

https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml

Washington State Department of Transportation. (2018).Fares Information.

https://www.wsdot.wa.gov/ferries/fares/

Weidman, L. (September 12, 2018). Theories that Inform Public Relations Planning.