Company: Generac Power Systems, Waukesha, WI
Company Description: Generac is the total energy solutions company powering a smarter world. We help free people to use energy on their own terms by giving them access to reliable energy that is also cleaner, more efficient and better managed.We do this by making homes a sanctuary where people have reliable power so they can safely and comfortably work, learn and entertain.
Nomination Category: Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, & Public Relations Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Social Media Focused
 Nomination Title: Generac 2024 Storm Response Team Social Media Series
- Optional: Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 32 words used.
Attaching links to view each video (the same asset was deployed to each social media channel, though with different copy to customize for each audience) as well as a summary slide PDF.
- Which will you submit for this nomination, a video of up to five (5) minutes in length about the nominated PR campaign or program, or written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
Written answers to the questions
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the nominated video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video.
Submitting written answers
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this first question: Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched:
October / 2024 Hurricane Season
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this second question: Describe the genesis of the nominated campaign or program: the reasons it was initiated, the challenges it was created to address, the problems it was developed to solve, etc. (up to 250 words):
Total 248 words used.
The U.S. experienced nearly 1.5 billion hours of power outages, the highest since 2010 (when Generac began tracking), largely in part due to a record-breaking hurricane season (one of the deadliest and most costly.) As an energy technology company best known for home generators, hurricane season is a critical communications opportunity, and social media (Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn) is a key channel.
Dating back to Hurricane Katrina in 2025, trained Generac employees give up the comforts of home and family to “deploy” for two-week rotations into devastated areas (storm-dependent) to provide help to service portable, residential and commercial generators for major outages. Hurricanes Helene and Milton, back-to-back, set off a 4-week deployment for our Storm Response Team – first North Carolina then Florida.
One of the challenges in communicating during hurricane season is that the organic channels have a broad audience, and storm impacts are often framed best to local audiences. (Why pay close attention to Florida if you’re in Ohio?) But when Helene (and then Milton) generated national headlines, our opportunity to tell the Generac brand story to a general audience turned a one-off piece of social content featuring our Storm Team into a 4-installment series/campaign to showcase Generac’s value of agility and giving back – “powering possibilities and generating goodness.”
The social-first assets and the stories gathered by the Storm Team brought the human element to the forefront, making a connection with our audiences and propelling the campaign into “viral” status for Generac.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this third question: Describe the development of the campaign or program: the planning process, the goal setting, the creative and media development, the scheduling, etc. (up to 250 words):
Total 250 words used.
Generac’s social team developed our 2024 strategy to fit algorithms for each platform, prioritizing storytelling with social-first assets. Goals: increasing reach/engagement.
Our Storm Response Team communications employed that strategy to maximize opportunistic moments and turn them into a cohesive series. The assets consisted of vertical video and “UGC-style” photos from the Storm Team’s cameras (we equipped them with GoPros), as well as a local production crew’s footage, and daily meetings helped us identify the social stories.
Our internal creative team captured the team’s deployment departure as our first post to kick off the series - an algorithmically driven carousel.
The next post showcased collaboration between Generac and Starlink – the Storm Team identified and communicated a need on the ground, which led to a donation of 100 portable generators to help activate satellite internet via helicopters. We “newsjacked” this post’s timing with a vertical video narrative that made this our best performer of the series.
Another was long-form social storytelling post with a carousel of photos of the team helping the only general store in Beech Mountain, NC. We knew that the story of Fred, a local celebrity and Generac customer for years, was the star of that post, and the UGC photos of Fred and the team brought it home.
We wrapped with the professionaly shot vertical video telling the individual Storm Team participants’ experiences during their deployment.
For LinkedIn, we engaged employees with “notify employees” and boosted posts on channels that were performing well organically with $500 each.
- If you are providing written answers for your submission, you must provide an answer to this fourth question: Outline the activities and concrete results of this campaign or program since the beginning of 2023. Even if your initiative started before 2023, limit your response to activities and results since the beginning of 2023 only (up to 250 words):
Total 243 words used.
Our storytelling eye and social-first assets rendered this series our most successful – ever. We set records, and one post gave us our first-ever “viral” moment.
Across all posts:
*1.4M impressions – an average 2024 post would get between 50-75K impressions/reach across all channels. 18-28X more.
*117K engagements – an average 2024 post would get between 1000-1500 engagements across all channels. 78-117X more.
*685K video views (a measure of both reach and engagement) – we’re still building video baselines, but this eclipsed all expectations by 10-15X.
All four posts in this series were top performing in October. The second post – and most current in regards the news cycle (our “newsjacking” paid off) – was the top-performing post of the entire year by far. (It set all new records.) It had the most impressions/reach (Facebook by 2X the next, Instagram by 17X the next, and LinkedIn by 15X the next.) It also had the most high-value (HV) engagements (we consider a HV engagement comments/shares/likes – worth more than a reaction) by 6X, and earned the most comments by 7X. After seeing organic metrics, we ended up boosting this post with $500 on each channel to continue the momentum.
The carousel post with Fred’s General Mercantile’s story had the top number of Facebook engagements by 1.6X and the best engagement rate there as well by 2X. It was also boosted with $500 on Facebook only after seeing organic engagement do so well.
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