Barrie D’Rozario DiLorenzo is a small ad agency based in Minneapolis. Last year, when faced with a lull in business, we created a 4 month employee reward/PR program we called “500 hours”. Over the summer, each employee was given 500 hours – fully-paid and with benefits – to follow their passions and recharge their creative energy.

They had one deliverable: to do something they were passionate about and contribute it at the end of the 4 months to the “500 hours” PR film the agency planned to put out.

We did this to reward our 20 employees and also because we believed there would be a great PR buzz which we would help new business. The campaign succeeded beyond our wildest expectations. A beautiful 5- minute story created by the local NBC station (which featured all the wonderful passions people followed during their 500 hours) touched a chord across America where people seem to be working day and night instead of pursuing their dreams. Overnight, the NBC film was picked up by over 50 media outlets across the country, including USA Today, MSN, Today Show, Fox Business, Huffington Post, to name a few. It culminated in a 3 minute story on the 6.30 pm primetime NBC nightly news viewed by almost 10 million people. In addition, the stories we shared by thousands of people via social media. In the months that followed, the enormous PR buzz and goodwill helped BD’D land new business from a wise range of clients including Kemps, United Health, Optum, Rosetta Stone and Tropicana.

The goal was two fold:

1) To reward and reenergize our employees. We are after all in a creative business and we need to recharge to keep our creative edge. We gave them the gift of time.

2) To generate good PR and buzz which we knew would help our new business efforts.

The 5-minute local NBC story was picked up by over 50 publications across the US, including USA Today, MSN, Fox Business, Today Show, to name just a few. This culminated in a three-minute story of the NBC primetime nightly news view by almost 10 million people.

The effort generated media worth over 1.8M in value with over 1 Billion impressions.

The stories were also shared thousands of time through social media and all the comments were overwhelmingly positive.

Importantly, once the “500 hours” summer effort was over, the agency attracted new business from several new clients, including United Health Group, Optum, Kemps, Rosetta Stone & Tropicana. This was in no small part due to the goodwill generated by the effort.

People were given 500 fully paid hours off over the 4 months.

The ask was simple: “figure out what you’re passionate about, and do it”. Everyone was expected to contribute one thing they did to the “500-hour PR film” we planned to put out in the end.

Work for current clients came first and no balls were dropped. And we took on no new business or pitches, to ensure that people got the time off.

Once a month the agency met as a group and everyone brought 10 pictures of whatever passion they were pursuing. These meetings were inspiring and touching as people saw their co-workers come alive in ways they never had before.

Business at the agency was slow. Rather than cutting back to compensate for the quieter time, we did the exact opposite. We took on no new business for 4 months and instead invested in giving people time to recharge creatively by following their passions.

We decided to turn a negative into a positive. By giving people 500 paid hours to follow their passions, we created goodwill and buzz for the agency while rewarding employees at the same time.