ALLIANCE Member Case Histories

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Grassroots Media Relations

Member: Steve Lubetkin

Client: Consolidated Rail Corporation

Challenge: Gain Congressional support for legislation that would permit Conrail to become an independent, publicly traded company, at a time when the Reagan Administration was determined to privatize the federally funded rail system through a negotiated sale to one of its largest competitors, the Norfolk Southern Corporation.

Strategy: Steve helped orchestrate management's pro-active grassroots media relations campaign. He coordinated the work of three teams, arranging and personally conducting meetings with more than 50 editorial writers at newspapers across the country to discuss and explain the financial and economic implications of the Conrail privatization.

Results:

• Telephone and letter contact with more than 400 other editors resulted in 549 editorials supporting an independent Conrail.
• Successfully authored and placed more than 150 op-ed articles bylined by Conrail's chairman, and 200 letters to the editor.
• Achieved Congressional support for what was then the largest initial public offering in U.S. history, when Conrail began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on March 26, 1987, a transaction valued at $1.9 billion at that time.
• Steve's article on the media relations campaign behind the Conrail privatization process appeared in the Fall 1995 issue of The Public Relations Strategist, a quarterly publication of the Public Relations Society of America.