Public Relations
AT&T Global Olympic Village
The AT&T Global Olympic Village (GOV) was a centerpiece of the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, GA. Inside the GOV was a private area for Olympic athletes and their guests. Outside was a stage that featured nightly concerts with performances by Faith Hill, Ray Charles, Santana and more. Katherine Stone was the Account Supervisor at Cohn & Wolfe responsible for media relations for the GOV. She directed a 15-member team that wrote press releases, pitched media, managed photographers and media access, provided PR support for the concerts and much more. She also supported the AT&T PR team with crisis management after the Centennial Olympic Park bombing, which happened just outside the GOV.
Her team met all goals, generating total advertising equivalency (unearned media) of more than $25 million in US media coverage alone for AT&T during the Olympic Games. Stone was named to the AT&T 100, 100 internal and external people who contributed most to AT&T’s successful global sponsorship of the Games.
Employee Relations
The Glass Quilt
The Chief Marketing Officer of The Coca-Cola Company asked Stone to identify and execute an employee relations activity to support the launch of Coca-Cola Classic's new "Enjoy" advertising campaign. She selected and worked with an agency, wrote the creative brief, reviewed concepts and chose the final execution. The Glass Quilt was a colorful series of photographs and stories from employees about their own experiences with Coke, not as people who worked there but as regular consumers. She managed the project from start to finish, including obtaining funding approval, obtaining employee story submissions, choosing which employees to feature, and supervising all agency work. The Glass Quilt went on exhibit in the lobby of the company's worldwide headquarters, and the exhibit was so well-received that it was extended an additional two weeks at the request of the Chairman's office. Stone received a recognition letter from the CEO for my leadership of this project.
The Glass Quilt was featured in the book "There's No Business That's Not Show Business: Marketing In An Experience Culture," by David L. Rogers, Karen Vrotsos and Bernd Schmitt.
Experiential Marketing
Coca-Cola Shrink Tank
Stone chartered and championed a project that would allow consumers to interact with Coca-Cola at the point of sale. The project involved building a small machine that consumers could use to select one among a series of artist-designed wraps for a 500ml (20-ounce) PET bottle of Coke and shrink wrap it on to the bottle in a matter of seconds. Consumers could choose their own individualized bottle label, at the very least allowing them to express themselves through Coca-Cola and at the most making their Coca‑Cola bottle a collectors’ item in future years.
In 2002 Katherine Stone led a 4-person cross-functional development team comprised of associates from Package Development, Sales Equipment Engineering and the 7-Eleven Global Marketing Team. She negotiated with the 7-Eleven team to pay 50% of the costs of project development, managed through all legal issues and obtained support from Corporate Environmental Affairs, our Patent office, Product Liability, Trademark and Food Law/Food Labeling. She managed field testing in Malaysia and Singapore which showed sales volume increases of 943% in Singapore and 371% in Malaysia. The project was commercialized by 7-Eleven in Singapore.
Stone was awarded a U.S. Patent (#6,577,922 B2) for Point of Sale Product Personalization System. This was one of the first packaging personalization pilot tests for Coca-Cola. When the new World of Coca-Cola museum first opened in downtown Atlanta, buying a bottle and using the Shrink Tank was the most popular sales item in the store.
Awareness/Event Management
Climb Out of the Darkness
Together with the board chair at Postpartum Progress, in 2013 Katherine Stone created Climb Out of the Darkness®, the world's largest event raising awareness of maternal mental illnesses like postpartum depression. Climb Out of the Darkness is held on or near the longest day of the year annually to help shine the most light on perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. The event features mothers and others across the globe joining together to climb mountains and hike trails to represent their symbolic rise out of the darkness of maternal mental illness and into the light of hope and recovery. She developed the branding and key messages around the Climb and managed the worldwide event.
In 2016, Climb Out of the Darkness had more than 4,200 registered participants on more than 180 teams in 45 states and 7 countries, and raised $350,000. The event has been covered by outlets like BuzzFeed and CNN.com, and generated more than 151 million media impressions.