Holland Bus Uses Public Relations to Increase Sales
Dealer: Holland Bus Sales
Contact: Chuck Burch
School District: Waterford School District, Michigan
This month, Waterford School District (WSD) deployed 10 new Blue Bird Vision Propane buses into its fleet. Holland Bus Sales’ Chuck Burch knew the district could get positive attention about the buses — they are the first in the county to switch from diesel buses to propane models. Chuck wanted to show that his school district customer was being smart with its money and forward thinking for the community.
ROUSH CleanTech and Holland Bus Sales worked together on a press release and event last year for another local customer in Detroit. Holland had a lot of success from that public relations effort, and they knew that we could drum up some more attention for this district, too.
Holland and ROUSH CleanTech sent a questionnaire to WSD to help the school district think through the story to tell about its bus purchase. For this particular customer, the new superintendent had a previous positive experience with propane buses, so it was an easy choice. We asked them to take some high-resolution photos, too, that we would make available to reporters.
We used the information from WSD and other newsworthy data on propane school buses to draft a press release. Timing it around the delivery of the new buses, we distributed the press release to media outlets in the area and to school bus trade publications. We then followed up with outreach via email and phone calls to secure media placements.
Local media coverage of new propane deployments gives school districts an opportunity to tell their story, while offering Blue Bird dealers the chance to promote alt fuels, get more attention from other districts in their market, keep Blue Bird’s name in the news, and potentially grow sales.
Are you interested in promoting the propane buses sold to one of your customers? Email Brian Carney at brian.carney@roush.com to learn more about this opportunity.
Read the full press release here.
Here are some examples of the media coverage:
