Weber Shandwick To Support Campaign For National Marrow Donor Program

Wednesday, May 07, 2008 BLOOMINGTON, Minn. – May 7, 2008 – The Minneapolis-St. Paul office of Weber Shandwick this week kicked-off the second year of a campaign for the National Marrow Donor Program® (NMDP). Weber Shandwick is supporting the organization’s Thanks Mom campaign to recruit bone marrow donors who can provide life-saving transplants.

For thousands of people with leukemia, lymphoma and other life-threatening diseases, a marrow transplant offers a second chance at life. Thanks Mom, which runs May 5 – May 19, urges people to join the National Marrow Donor Program Registry online or in person at drives across the country. This year’s goal is to recruit 46,000 new donors.

To support the project, Weber Shandwick is conducting national media relations as well as local outreach in 20 markets across the country. The agency is also conducting outreach to faith-based community leaders and launching a strong online strategy to direct traffic to http://www.marrow.org/, the NMDP’s Web site.

"We're proud to continue our work with the NMDP," said Sara Gavin, president of Weber Shandwick’s Minneapolis-St. Paul office. "This campaign not only provides our team an opportunity to do unique and creative work, but also to truly impacts thousands of lives."

Last year's highly successful "Thanks Mom" campaign recruited 43,000 new donors to the Registry, more than double the campaign goal of 20,000. The 2007 campaign has garnered several industry awards including PRWeek’s Healthcare Campaign of the Year, the IABC MN Pinnacle Award and the IABC Gold Quill.

About the National Marrow Donor Program
The NMDP facilitates unrelated marrow and cord blood transplants as a single point of access for a long-standing collaborative network of leading national and international medical facilities in marrow and cord blood transplantation. The NMDP connects patients, doctors, donors and researchers to the resources they need to help more people live longer and healthier lives. For more information call 1 (800) MARROW-2 or visit www.marrow.org.

About Weber Shandwick
Weber Shandwick is one of the world's leading global public relations firms with offices in major media, business and government capitals around the world. The firm specializes in strategic marketing communications, media relations, public affairs, reputation management, and crisis and issues management. It also offers corporate communications counseling services. The firm provides specialized integrated services including Web relations, advocacy advertising, market research and visual communications. Weber Shandwick received the highest client-satisfaction honors in the 2007 Agency Excellence Survey by PRWeek U.S. and in 2006, was named Large PR Firm of the Year (PR News U.S.), European Consultancy of the Year (The Holmes Report) and Network of the Year (Asia Pacific PR Awards). The firm also won the 2005, 2006 and 2007 United Nations Grand Award for Outstanding Achievement in Public Relations. To learn more, please visit www.webershandwick.com.

Weber Shandwick is a unit of The Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG), which is one of the world's leading organizations of advertising agencies and marketing services companies.