Legend Homes and Oregon's First Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

A deep philosophy of corporate philanthropy and volunteerism has been part of privately held Oregon homebuilder Legend Homes' culture since its inception in Portland in 1965. The Legend Homes brand is tightly focused on quality, value and environmental sustainability.

All Legend Homes are Earth Advantage® certified. In late May 2007, Lock and Key Productions contacted Legend Homes for ABC's Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Local civic and social leaders had recommended Legend Homes because of its past community involvement as the builder of choice for an episode to be shot in Corvallis, Oregon from July 7 - 15, 2007.

Legend Homes, along with Woloshin Communications, Inc. was challenged to work with local and national media, recruit over 300 volunteers, secure all donations and organize event logistics, from sponsors to dinner, snacks and beverages to build a 4,000 square foot home for the Byers family in106 hours.

Note that this campaign was completed by the principal of Woloshin Communications and one assistant while simultaneously servicing our existing client base

Objectives:

• Ensure that company had enough positive community presence to recruit over 300 skilled volunteers
• Tap into the "reservoir" of past positive community response to generate $350,000 in-kind material donations
• Legend Homes was required to build an Earth Advantage® certified home in 106 hours
• It was also discovered, through interviews with past Extreme builders that unless media efforts were carefully constructed, Legend Home's logo and brand was at risk because of the Extreme Makeover production crew. The findings also revealed that there was a community risk a history of insensitivity to local communities and local media by the Extreme Makeover production crew, Lock and Key Productions staff.
• Most importantly, this effort needed to boost community support by providing a sustained response ensuring that the community truly understood that Legend Homes was the environmentally sensitive corporate citizen it claimed to be.

Outcomes: Despite an incredibly heavy schedule, which also included serving other clients, Woloshin Communications, in partnership with various Legend Homes teams was able to achieve SUSTAINABLE and POSITIVE community relations. The on-site random survey was distributed on the day with the highest spectator attendance (reveal day). The survey had a 24% response rate.

Of those surveyed:

• 74% gave Legend Homes the highest possible rating (5) for corporate citizenship
• 22% gave Legend Homes the second highest or "good" rating (4) for corporate citizenship
• 96% of the community involved, rated Legend Homes as a valued corporate citizen
• A large percentage, 68% had prior knowledge of Legend Homes through various sources, but primarily as homebuyers or through exposure to home buying media targeted to primary audiences
• Those surveyed were left with positive community feelings
• (89%) with virtually NO complaints about strained community relations, even though Lock and Key changed schedules without notice, and hundreds of citizens were surprised by Lock and Key security requirements and unplanned road closures
• Legend Homes received high marks for volunteer recruitment,
• 80% ranked our effort as excellent and 14% as good for a total of 94%

Media impressions on web, print, radio and television ranked in the millions. Media equivalency and publicity value in Oregon from 7/7 to 7/15 in an analysis by Moba Media was over $230,000.

Legend Homes was specifically featured, named and quoted in the more than 64% of all coverage.