iHeartRadio Show Your Stripes Receives Halo Awards, The Industry’s Highest Cause Marketing Honor
Clear Channel's Effort to Help Returning Veterans Re-Enter the Workplace Also Wins PR News’ Corporate Social Responsibility Award
New York – May 29, 2014 - Clear Channel Media and Entertainment announced today that iHeartRadio Show Your Stripes, its effort to help veterans re-enter the workplace by highlighting their valuable training and experience, has received two Halo Awards for its work. iHeartRadio Show Your Stripes won the 2014 Halo Award for Best Message-Focused Campaign, a category recognizing businesses that use its resources to share a specific message, as well as a second Halo Award for Best Social Service Campaign for its targeted approach to addressing the growing social issue of veteran unemployment. iHeartRadio Show Your Stripes was the only campaign to be honored twice at this year’s event.
Since the program’s launch, Clear Channel has invested well over $100 million in radio, digital and out-of-home resources to highlight the skills brought back by returning servicemen and women and their value to employers in the workplace. Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio Show Your Stripes is the largest public service program in the company’s history and the most mainstream public campaign addressing the growing issue of U.S. veteran unemployment in communities across the nation.
For the past 11 years, the Cause Marketing Forum’s Halo Awards have recognized businesses and nonprofits that "do well by doing good." The Halo Awards are the highest annual accolade in North America within the field of cause marketing honoring nine categories with four finalists in each category. A list of all Cause Marketing Halo Award winners can be viewed online at http://www.CauseMarketingForum.com/2014finalists.
“In this crowded marketplace, Cause Marketing Halo Award-winning campaigns have risen to the top because of their authenticity, effectiveness in communicating a cause message and ability to generate social and financial dividends,” said David Hessekiel, Cause Marketing Forum President. “These campaigns offer creative partnership solutions that leverage assets of company and cause.”
Early this year, PR News recognized iHeartRadio Show Your Stripes among organizations that they determined to be the top players in corporate social responsibility and that have set new standards of excellence. Clear Channel received PR News' CSR Award for Social Good, a category that showcases an agency or corporation that has integrated into its overall business model the desire to improve common public welfare. Other PR News CSR Award winners included AT&T, Office Depot Foundation, Sprint, TD Ameritrade, American Airlines, Hyundai, Time Warner Cable Media and NBCUniversal.
“A year ago Clear Channel embarked on a significant effort to support our returning veterans by leveraging Clear Channel’s enormous reach to connect vets with businesses looking to hire. We turned on all of our assets – broadcast, digital and out-of-home – in the loudest way possible to showcase the value vets offer employers,” said John Sykes, President of Clear Channel Entertainment Enterprises. “We couldn’t be more pleased by the response from veterans, businesses, the public, celebrities and military leaders who have all rallied behind our efforts and are helping us to grow and evolve the program beyond 2014."