What it is
On May 4, 2007 an EF5 tornado took almost all of Greensburg, Kansas off the map. The town decided to rebuild green, to a high-performance standard with its public buildings aiming at the top of the LEED scale, with no budget to buy the materials that standard needs.
Tellus Design and Build, then the only firm marketing itself nationally as a green builder, came to Kansas in June 2007. Discovery Channel found Tellus through that visibility and contracted it for its coverage, and Planet Green built a series around the rebuild, Greensburg, which ran three seasons from June 2008 to May 2010.
What Common Ground did
- Jesse Fowler led the preconstruction and general construction teams on the rebuild and coordinated the town's green redesign.
- Recognized that the donation appeal was aimed at the wrong budget. A manufacturer's philanthropy desk is sized for gestures; its brand and category marketing budget exists to buy reach, and the committed broadcast was reach no media buy could deliver.
- Sold the rebuild as a distribution asset: one manufacturer per product category, exclusive, on camera.
- Ranked the categories by what a viewer could identify on film, not by what the material cost. House wrap printed with the maker's name ranked above insulation hidden inside a closed wall, and DuPont anchored the program.
- Negotiated the national supplier partnerships behind the donated materials, making the calls personally for months rather than through an agency, finding the brand or category marketing lead inside each company, and closing DuPont first so every later pitch had a live example. Building-supply companies and a tire and rubber manufacturer came in behind DuPont, each exclusive in its own category, and no manufacturer who wanted in was turned away.
- Ran a fit check on every donated delivery so the mix of products from many manufacturers still met the one green standard, and scheduled installs so each sponsor's product was on site at the stage the crews filmed.
- Kept the town's green standard fixed throughout: nothing in the sponsorship program was allowed to buy the specification down, and the broadcaster's production schedule served as the fixed clock, turning every delivery date into a marketing obligation.
Results
- More than $30 million of donated sustainable materials, at wholesale value, for thirteen rebuilt homes and commercial structures, from a program that began with no purchasing budget.
- Coverage on Discovery and Planet Green, including an episode of Build It Bigger with Danny Forster.
- The category-slot method: a repeatable way to fund a rebuild by selling what a committed broadcast is worth to a brand. Fowler has used the same sell-the-slot logic since in a golf sponsorship program, and it held.
External links
- Public data room: Greensburg, Kansas data room
Public record
Stories from this work
Greensburg: what went wrongThe tornado wiped out Greensburg, a town about a mile wide.Mistake and repair
The Greensburg rebuildIn May 2007 an EF5 tornado leveled Greensburg, Kansas, ninety five percent of the town gone.High-stakes save
Nine months of cold calls for a town with no budgetAn EF5 tornado had flattened Greensburg, Kansas, and the rebuild effort had no money for the kind of high-performance materials the thirteen planned homes would need.High-stakes save
At a glance
| Project type | Sponsor and supplier partnership program |
|---|---|
| Industry | Disaster rebuild and sustainable construction |
| Seat | Preconstruction and general contracting lead |
| Ran through | Tellus Design and Build |
| Dates | June 2007 to December 2008 |
| Duration | Eighteen months |
| Location | Greensburg, Kansas |
| Public data room | Greensburg, Kansas data room |
| Related pages | Tellus Design + Build, Jesse Fowler |
| Credit | Created by Common Ground |