In order to drive awareness and aid in the fundraising for the proposed $100 million memorial for Martin Luther King, Jr., the first memorial dedicated to a person of color on the National Mall, 5W Public Relations was hand-picked by the Washington DC Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial Project to lead an aggressive PR campaign. The Ceremonial Groundbreaking, which was held on November 13th 2006 in Washington, DC, and had more than 5,000 supporters attending, was the collaboration of the Foundation, various corporate donors such as General Motors, The Coca-Cola Foundation, McDonald's, AARP, Lehman Brothers and others.
For this once-in-a-lifetime experience, 5W Public Relations was the media liaison with the offices of President George W. Bush, former President Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Maya Angelou, Sen. Barack Obama, Tommy Hilfiger, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Ambassador Andrew Young, Diane Sawyer, Nelson Mandela and other notable personalities. We launched a targeted, national pre-event coverage campaign, securing coverage with the Associated Press, USA Today, CBS World News Tonight with Charles Gibson, NPR, Tom Joyner Morning Show, Good Morning America, and more top tier media outlets.
5W Public Relations secured extensive national and international coverage of the historic event. We achieved front page articles in key publications such as the Washington Post, Financial Times, Investor's Business Daily, New York Times, USA Today, CNN, Yahoo! News and feature broadcast segments on Good Morning America, ABC World News Tonight with Charles Gibson, CBS Evening News, C-SPAN in addition to coverage through Reuters, Associated Press, Los Angeles Times and many more!