PR Kung Fu 04/18/2010
 
This blog post is intended for those of you who are teaching marketing or public relations and are looking for a good, end of semester discussion topic. But, everyone else, please read on to the last paragraph.

As you may know a new version of the movie, Karate Kid, is coming out in June.  It stars Jackie Chan, and Jaden Smith (Will Smith’s son.)  When you view the trailer for the movie, you will notice that they are not using Karate in this movie, but rather, Kung Fu.

As has been mentioned many times in this blog , one of the best ways for a local business to get media mentions and spread word-of-mouth is to tie its story into a larger event.  To this end I have asked my students to discuss how the Bethlehem Kung Fu Center (you can use a local Kung Fu school if there is one convenient to you) can use the launch of this movie to promote its business.  I remind them to bring in all of the elements of PR and marketing we’ve discussed throughout the semester and to be thorough, be innovative, and be creative in their preparation.

I am also interested in have your thoughts (or your students’ thoughts) on this topic, so please comment on how you think a regional Kung Fu school might capitalize on this movie launch.
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Tea Time 04/06/2010
 
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“We just don’t have anything newsworthy.”  That is the cry I hear from so many companies that have products that are in crowded markets or products that seem somewhat mundane.  This is what Salada Tea, makers of one of the world’s oldest products could have said, but they didn’t.  Realizing that their ancient beverage stands at the intersection of several modern trends, they set out on their “Unbottle Your Tea” campaign with the assistance of marketing communications agency, Pinckney Hugo Group.

In the last several years environmental stewardship, frugality, and healthy living have been some of the hottest topics in the media and blogosphere, and Salada realized that “unbottled” tea reduces the amount of material in the waste stream, by eliminating bottles and saves money as brewing tea from tea bags is much less expensive than buying bottled, ready-to-drink tea.  In addition, there has been lots of recent scientific evidence that tea (especially green tea) is good for you.  A PR goldmine-if executed properly, and Salada and Pinckney Hugo did just that.

The goals for their campaign include:  increasing the sales and awareness of
Salada teas; stimulating trial and usage of their products; promoting new green tea flavors; and building an online database of consumers for future promotional efforts.  The primary target market for this campaign was women over the age of thirty-five.  To achieve these goals they reached out to traditional media as well as bloggers; used YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook extensively, conducted a media tour where a brand spokesperson went on the road visiting media outlets; extended the integrated marketing campaign  to include media sponsorship with Prevention Magazine for fitness-oriented events (and to distribute samples), and held in-store promotions.

The results were outstanding and exceeded their optimistic expectations.  A few of the measurable highlights of this campaign were:

·        Initial coverage by New York Times’ Media & Advertising, PR Week and AdWeek

·         Media coverage reaching nearly 600 stories and nearly 80 millionunweighted media impressions

·         More than 2,200 consumers visited the Unbottle Web site

·         The Media tour landed 17 TV interviews with Salada spokesperson  along with supporting print and online coverage

·         Increased sales in target markets followed tour appearances

·         More than 98,000 samples of Salada were distributed at sponsored health events

·         More than 4,000 people requested a free sample in response to an e-newsletter sponsorship

·         New flavors were highlighted in all TV appearances and blog reviews

·         Awareness was generated prior to in-store availability driving demand for new flavors

·         UBYT Web site has attracted more than 355,000 unique visitors, 547,000 page views and 2.8 million hits since its launch

·         Salada and UBYT campaign were featured in more than 100 audience-appropriate blogs

·         Salada collected more than 120,000 e-mail addresses from promotions and giveaways

Wow, and this is just a sample of what this campaign achieved.  Here is a sample from their YouTube site.  Be sure to check out their sample of media mentions and list of blog coverage in the “News” section of the Unbottle Your Tea microsite. Their Facebook fan page, and Twitter site are also worth a look.  Doing PR right is crucial in any business.  Use this as an example and please share it with your friends and colleagues.
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I really wish I had been the first one to break the news about the Grateful Dead being social networking pioneers.  Alas, they start this when I was quite young and it took the great news organizations of our land decades to figure this out.  What did the Dead do that gave them the cult following we all look for when marketing our products and businesses?  They created content and community, and they were willing to share.  In addition, they developed some outstanding symbols for the community that let people announce their membership. 

“Our strong suit is what we do, and our audience,” Jerry Garcia

Let there be songs to fill the air.
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If I had a nickel (ok, maybe a quarter) for every time someone said to me, “Yeah, Twitter is interesting, but I don’t see the marketing value in it,” I would be quite well off.  Well, here I have an outstanding example of a business using Twitter to its benefit-Kogi Korean Barbeque.

This is a mobile restaurant based in southern California that announces its location by tweeting.   Yes, they deliver a good product, but they add to the mix by making the meal an adventure, because you have to find them.  This creates a type of scarcity, which we know from Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: Science and Practice that can make a product seem even more valuable to us.  In addition, they have used this new marketing format to drum up lots of MPR.  They have been featured on the Food Network, you can be one of their 50,000 plus followers on Twitter, read over 1200 overwhelmingly positive reviews on Yelp, and even read more about their next venture in the Wall Street Journal.

This, my friends, is Twitter done right.

(Become a fan of the MPR Facebook page.)

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