Griffin Integrated Marketing honored for Hurricane Ike crisis work with an AMA 2009 Crystal Award

Nearly nine months after Hurricane Ike battered the Texas Gulf Coast, we were awarded 2009 Crystal Award from The American Marketing Association’s (AMA) Houston Chapter for our crisis/situation management work surrounding the storm.  Winners were announced Saturday, May 29 at the Intercontinental Houston Hotel.

From left to right: Deanna Wilke, Account Manager and Mandy Pierson, Office Manager, accept the 2009 AMA Crystal Award on behalf of the agency.

Other finalists in the PR/crisis/situation management-single event category included CenterPoint Energy and VT2 Studios.

“This award is a great reminder of the Griffin team’s ‘can-do’ spirit, even during tough personal times.” said Gwen Griffin, managing director of the agency.  “Not only was our office damaged during Hurricane Ike, many of our employees faced personal property losses.  Still, we were able to come together remotely, roll up our sleeves and quickly provide an extremely valuable service to the entire Bay Area Houston region.”

In September 2008, we helped raise awareness of the devastation caused by Hurricane Ike in the coastal Bay Area Houston (BAH) region, which had been nearly shut out of predominant, post-storm editorial coverage.  In one day’s time, we coordinated a full-scale press conference for the region that featured 11 out of the 13 regional mayors and numerous other key business leaders.  The press conference helped these elected officials and business leaders update their residents on recovery efforts, as well as inform other cities and governmental entities outside of BAH on the state of the region.

The one-hour press conference resulted in extensive television and print coverage, including two television stations which aired the press conference live in its entirety.  The editorial coverage spawned two critical meetings with the Federal Emergency Management Agency that help speed much-needed assistance to the area.

We are very proud and honored to receive this award!