Percentage of Butler County vets receiving financial assistance
Hamilton 51%
Middletown 28%
Fairfield 15%
Oxford 2%
Somerville 2%
Trenton 2%
Source: Butler County Veterans Service Commission
The Butler County Veterans Service Commission has agreed to spend $30,000 on advertising to reach an estimated 25,000 veterans who might need their help.
The commissioners enlisted the aid of five students from the Pi Sigma Epsilon marketing and sales fraternity at Miami University in Oxford to help them figure out how to reach more vets. Statistics show the majority of veterans the board approved for financial assistance recently — 78 percent — hail from Hamilton and Middletown. But they know there are countless vets countywide who need help wading through Veterans Administration red tape, rides to medical appointments and potentially emergency financial aid.
Board President Fred Southard pointed out on Wednesday that 50 percent of the veterans served live in Hamilton, and 28 percent are in Middletown.
“I kind of championed the marketing study, and these numbers kind of verify, in my opinion, what I thought we might find,” he told fellow commissioners at their monthly meeting. “That’s 22 percent of the zip codes have zero, we’re not serving them… I know there are veterans who need what we have.”
They spent $6,750 of their $75,000 advertising budget on the marketing study, and now intend to spend up to $30,000 implementing it. Commissioner Ken Smith was the only member to vote against spending the money.
“I don’t think we’ll get a benefit with the cost,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll get the amount of veterans we’re thinking.”
Executive Director Caroline Bier said the largest chunk of money will go to mail out 26,000 post cards to veterans who have identified themselves through the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. She got a price of about $10,000 but intends to get a couple more bids before ordering the mailers. In fact, Bier said she intends to get three bids for all of the items they will purchase to advertise their agency.
A big part of the promotion will be the new logo the commissioners selected from local student submissions. The commission has been using the county logo that features the clock tower on the historic courthouse. The new brand has the American flag as the backdrop with three servicemen, one wounded, one armed and one saluting, with the five service branch emblems on it.
The new logo will be emblazoned on give-aways like lanyards, bumper stickers, coins and car magnets, a banner for events and wrapped around the commission’s van. They also plan to buy gift cards to be raffled off at the Butler County Fair and the Honor and Remember concert this summer, and possibly — if the prosecutor’s office signs off on it — host a pull-up or push-up contest for younger vets.
The students also created a new website for the vet board and that site www.bcvets.org should go live shortly, according to Bier. She told the commissioners she realizes $30,000 is a lot of money, but she said they need to hit the ground running, and costs will lessen once they get everything going. Southard agreed.
“Thirty thousand dollars does sound high, but the flip side is we’re implementing all this in one swoop,” Southard said. “It’s my opinion that these things should have been done over the last several years. If they had been done over the last several years, it would just be a matter of replenishing supplies. Start up costs are much more expensive than maintaining a project.”
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