PENNSYLVANIA DENTAL ASSOCIATION



Communications and Public Relations Committee

Conference Call

January 11, 2013

Present Staff Present

Dr. Tamara Brady, Chair (2) Rob Pugliese

Dr. David Tecosky (1) Director of Communications

Dr. Steven Parrett (5) Jennifer McClure

Dr. Anthony Kibelbek (7) Communications Coordinator

Dr. Samer Mansour (9)

Dr. Dave Larson (5), Trustee-Liaison

Dr. John Nase (2), ADA Consultant

Absent

Dr. Randy Nolf (3)

Dr. John Reitz (4)

Dr. Bruce Terry (2), Editor

Dr. Brian Mark Schwab (4), Associate Editor

Call to Order

Dr. Tamara Brady, chair, called the meeting to order at 9:40 a.m.

Approval of Minutes

The council unanimously approved the September 28, 2012, meeting minutes on the Social Network in October.

Election of 2013-2014 Committee Chair and Vice Chair

The committee unanimously elected Dr. Tamara Brady as chair and Dr. Anthony Kibelbek as vice chair for 2013-2014.

Staff Update

Mr. Pugliese updated the committee on the PDA staff changes, with the communications department reduced from five staff members to three, including the hiring of Ms. Sara Mattrick as communications coordinator with a start date of January 14. He also reported that Ms. Jennifer McClure is now the creative design manager and will have primary responsibility for the website among other duties.

Old Business

Website

Ms. McClure is now working with the website, replacing Ms. Natalie Kinsinger, who will now be working at PDAIS. Ms. McClure and Mr. Pugliese explained the transition phase with the website that will continue for the next few months. Both the PDA database and website are being transitioned to a server with our new vendor, enSync. Mr. Pugliese reported that there have been problems that staff and enSync are working through. PDA needs to acquire updated content management software to complete the full transition of the PDA database to iMIS 15 with enSync.

As a result of the site being down sporadically, we saw decreased traffic in the latter part of December. Ms. McClure provided an overview of site traffic, statistics, searches and top referring websites from September, October, November and December. The site traffic has been remarkably steady prior to the late December problems.

Dr. John Nase reported that ADA, through its software and technology department, in the future may be able to support content management systems in the tripartite free of charge. This idea is in early stages and Dr. Nase will be monitoring any developments on this.

Pennsylvania Dental Journal

Mr. Pugliese reported on the production costs from 2012 and compared them to previous years. Largely due to our move to a new printer and with assistance from our designer, for the first time, Journal advertising revenue exceeded the cost of production expenses – $84,512 of production expenses and $107,370 of ad revenue. There was a savings of more than $41,000 when comparing 2011 and 2012.

One of the elements that has contributed to our savings has been a reduced Journal page count. Journal production staff emphasized a reduced page count throughout 2012 and feedback from members has continued to be positive.

Mr. Pugliese provided an overview of upcoming 2013 issues and some of the ideas that had been submitted. Some of the upcoming content includes the MOM-n-PA event; a piece on mandated dental screenings; a volunteer feature on a dental clinic in Chester; a legal article that provides practical information on electronic communication. In addition, the 2013 issues will contain the usual content on Annual Session, National Children’s Dental Health Month, Day on the Hill and any other noteworthy grassroots activity.

Electronic Advertising

Beginning in 2012, electronic advertising opportunities were offered in the monthly eNews Update and on the Social Network homepage. This will continue in 2013. Both Thayer Dental Laboratory and PDAIS are continuing with their ads this year. PDAIS has made some of their spots available to endorsed vendors and Tek Collect has purchased three of the eNews ads.

With these ads and those reserved for the Social Network, PDA has $2,425 of electronic ad revenue for 2013 so far.

NCDHM

Ms. Jennifer McClure provided an update on National Children’s Dental Health Month. Communications staff has worked for the last three months to communicate with member dentists, schools, teachers and the public about the changes to the NCDHM program. The theme for this year’s promotion is “Get a Gold Medal Smile.”

Ms. McClure reported that the teachers section of the PDA website has been updated with new activity sheets. Dentists have until the end of January to sign up for the NCDHM advisory group. PDA staff continues to push the revamped program via social media. An email blast was sent to all PDA members in October as well as to teachers and nurses who returned the NCDHM comment cards last year. Staff reached out to district and local presidents and secretaries to explain the changes to the program. Ads were placed in both the Pennsylvania Dental Journal and a number of district/local publications. Staff also reached out to schools via the Pennsylvania State Education Association. (Editor’s note: The week following this call, staff sent an eblast to 1,068 email addresses collected from various schools around the state.)

The committee inquired about the cost savings to the 2013 PDA budget with the elimination of all the printed materials from this promotion. (Editor’s Note: The elimination of the printed NCDHM materials saved about $13,000 in the 2013 budget.)

Dr. Mansour is NCDHM chair for this year and he will be reaching out to teachers in his area to generate interest in the promotion. Staff provided the website quick links postercontest and ncdhm for the committee.

News Releases

Ms. Jennifer McClure reported on recent news releases – “Dentists Love Halloween, Too” (focusing on the Halloween Candy Buyback Program) in October, “PDA’s Website Is A Valuable Oral Health Resource” in November and “Kids’ Corner a Valuable Resource for Children’s Oral Health” (promoting PDA Kids’ Corner and NCDHM) in December.

The January news release will focus on PDA sponsoring the poster contest for third graders for NCDHM. The February release will connect to that with another NCDHM-related message, discussing the importance of children’s oral health.

The committee provided suggestions for future topics, including mouth guards and kids’ sports safety for March. Staff will talk to a PDA member about the importance of safety and mouth guards for quotes in this release.

2013 Budget

Mr. Pugliese followed up with the committee from the discussion during the September 2012 conference call and confirmed that the changes in the NCDHM budget were the only changes for 2013.

New Business

Upcoming Events

Staff reminded the committee of key upcoming events, Annual Session at the end of April and Day on the Hill June 4, and encouraged members to get involved in Day on The Hill. Staff and Dr. Larson mentioned the work of the Governance Task Force (GTF) and the possible impact on the future of PDA committees. If the GTF and the PDA House of Delegates recommend keeping the current committee structure in place, the CPRC will need to schedule more calls beyond the May 24 call.

Upcoming Meeting

The next CPRC meeting is a May 24 conference call, scheduled for 9:30 a.m.

Adjournment

The meeting was adjourned at 11:15 a.m.

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download