Hudson Employment Index Website

Challenge
In 2004, the Hudson Employment Index^sm was established as a key Public Relations tool for Hudson North America. After a year, it had gained a foothold in the media community as a valuable indicator of job market strength. Originally, the data was delivered with a barebones website, rudimentary database, and static press releases from our PR Agency. In 2005, to further penetrate key markets where Hudson desired visibility, the Index survey information was sliced into 11 metropolitan market, 8 state, and 7 occupational categories. The website now needed to accomodate 26X the amount of information it had in the past, while making it manageable for a small internal staff to keep updated.

Strategy
Our strategy streamlined nearly every step of the Index delivery process to maximize efficiency including:

• Creating a Data Loader to parse incoming Excel sheets from our data gathering vendor into a SQL database that could drive multiple html page views.
• Building more attractive Flash based graphs derived from XML views of the raw data.
• Restructuring site navigation to provide fast access to information by market
• Integrating the Lyris ListManager email marketing engine to handle subscriptions to the monthly online media kit
• Templating the pages within our CMS so that they could be easily updated from month to month.

Results
Since the site re-launch the Hudson Employment Index has had a steady increase in covereage by major national and regional media outlets including TV, radio, newspaper, and internet. Within 3 months the internal delivery process became a well-oiled machine. The Hudson Employment Index^sm and its associated website received many industry accolades including:

• 2006 PR Week Award for Best Use of Research or Measurement
• 2006 Platinum PR Award Research & Measurement
• 2006 Gold Sabre Award – Professional Services Category
• 2005 IABC Spectra Award of Excellence

The research and website were discontinued in February 2008.