Mineta Transportation Institute
Challenge
Increasing Insight and Accountability
As a research institute, MTI is responsible for finding, generating, and sharing transportation reports and solutions with the general public and government agencies. Before switching to Meltwater, MTI distributed news releases through PR Newswire, which allowed no personalization and returned disappointing results. It offered no metrics to benchmark against, making it difficult for MTI to prove its effectiveness to the US Department of Transportation (DOT) and earn an increase in funding.
MTI's value to the Department of Homeland Security also suffered. The research institute couldn't effectively monitor keywords in news items, limiting their ability to contribute to the world's largest database on transportation-related terrorist activity.
"The search component has been imperative for populating our database of terrorist activity against surface transportation targets."
Karen Philbrick, Executive Director, Mineta
Solution
Finding Safety in Numbers
Today MTI uses Meltwater's contact database to build highly targeted media contact lists that allow more personalized distribution. Post-distribution, dashboard metrics give MTI's communications team greater visibility into the reach of their news releases. They can also measure their progress in attaining their goal of 150 media stories annually and report in more detail to the DOT.
These improvements in visibility are accompanied by real increases in public safety. Today MTI is better equipped to monitor surface transportation issues globally. Key articles on terrorism and transportation feed directly into its internal database, which is accessible to the Department of Homeland Security.
Summary
Meltwater Helps Mineta Transportation Institute
Generate more media coverage to deliver on its mission
"Our media coverage is now so good that MTI is often pointed to as the best performing of all the university research centers in our category. This coverage compels people to download our research reports- paid for with taxpayer money- and use them for policy making."
— Donna Maurillo, Director of Technology Transfer
Leverage global searches for use in anti-terrorism efforts
"We use Meltwater to search for global stories that focus on critical incidents and terrorist activity on buses, trains, and other surface transportation targets. This information has been imperative for populating our database of terrorist activity."
— Karen Philbrick, Executive Director
Easily access and modify its platform to meet specific needs
"Meltwater is accessible and easy to modify for specific needs, and it included an archive of all the material it had located for us. The cost also fit within our small, publicly funded budget."
— Donna Maurillo, Director of Technology Transfer
