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How we generate results: A few Case Studies.
Repeal Prohibition Parade and Party
December 5, 2008 was the 75th Anniversary of the repeal of prohibition, conveniently (for 21st Amendment Brewery) known as the 21st Amendment. To celebrate this important date, 21st Amendment Brewery, located in San Francisco, wanted to have a parade. Campbell Consulting generated clever ideas to ensure the event was newsworthy. We suggested offering birthday bounties for someone turning 21 and someone turning 75 on December 5, and making them the Grand Marshals of the parade. We established a password-only speakeasy at the after-party and twittered geohash coordinates to the passwords, which were hidden throughout the city.
As a result of extensive online public relations outreach, beer bloggers talked up the event in the weeks leading up to the event, and the parade made community calendars ranging from Yelp! To SquidList to the San Francisco Chronicle. The morning of the parade, the event was prominently featured on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle and on the lips of radio personalities at KFOG and KGO-AM. KTVU (Channel 2) covered the brewery’s ringing of the bell opening happy hour at 2:31 p.m. (when word of repeal officially reached San Francisco in 1933). Rumor has it Larry Harvey attended the parade’s kick-off at Justin Herman Plaza. By 5:15 p.m., the parade (now 80-strong) reached 21st Amendment Brewery, chanting “We Want Beer!” and singing “All we are saying, is give yeast a chance!” Even SFist.com had fun with the event. See more photos.
weBEERnar
When 21st Amendment decided to release their craft beer in a can in the greater San Franciso Bay Area, they turned to us to generate media coverage. The only problem: most Bay Area media had already covered 21st Amendment’s entry into the San Francisco market a few months before.
Campbell Consulting planned an online press conference, which we dubbed the “weBEERnar,” hosted by the owners of 21st Amendment Brewery. We invited beer writers and bloggers to log in to the online press conference to discuss the merits of cans vs. bottles. To encourage participation, we shipped them samples of 21st Amendment’s “Brew Free or Die!” IPA and “Hell or High Watermelon” wheat beer, along with instructions not to drink the beer until the day of the press conference, when we cracked open the cans together, “online,” at beer-thirty. More than a dozen top beer bloggers and writers logged in to learn about 21st Amendment's craft beer in a can, resulting in articles by Brewerman, Draftmag and The Brew Lounge.
Hullabaloo
When Bend, Oregon mixed-use neighborhood, NorthWest Crossing, found out that it was being included as part of Cottage Living magazine’s Top Ten Cottage Communities of 2008, everyone involved was looking forward to the editorial coverage in this renowned national publication. When the magazine’s staff contacted the team about the possibility of holding an event on-site at NorthWest Crossing, developer West Bend Property Company and the public relations team from Campbell Consulting got to work putting together a comprehensive plan for a festival to rival all festivals. NorthWest Crossing was its final choice for a location, but sadly the magazine had to remove the event from its annual plan for 2008 due to economic conditions.
NorthWest Crossing didn’t let it phase them and continued on with plans for a great neighborhood festival which they dubbed the “Hullabaloo.” A teaser advertising campaign with the phrase “Do you Hullabaloo?” was coupled with public relations outreach to promote this two-day festival in NorthWest Crossing’s neighborhood center – which included live music, sporting events, vendors, beverages, food and children’s activities. Cottage Living made good by giving NorthWest Crossing prime placement in their May issue to promote the event on a national level, while local press ran several stories leading up to the festival.
Because summers in Bend , Oregon are filled with festivals and activities, no one was certain how the Hullabaloo would be received in its inaugural year. Organizers were pleasantly surprised at the high turnout – with enthusiastic positive feedback from neighborhood business owners, attendees and the local community. In fact, everyone loved the Hullabaloo so much that it’s become an unofficial kick-off to summer and an annual (so far) event for NorthWest Crossing and all of Central Oregon.
Are you Chai-Lingual?
Campbell Consulting noticed that the word “chai” did not appear in any
English language dictionary in America. To right this wrong, we
developed “Get-Chai-in-the-Dictionary” campaign postcards, placing them
in cafes, at trade shows and on www.oregonchai.com – anywhere we
thought we could reach chai fanatics. We collected the postcards to
send to the editors of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, in hopes of
convincing them to add “chai” to their next edition.
The result? It worked! Over 1000 postcards were received from every
state in the nation as well as from Canada, Chile, China, Germany,
India, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Mexico and The United Kingdom. In
addition to the postcards, we received persuasive essays written by 6th
grade students from Bill Reed Middle School in Loveland, CO,
encouraging the addition of the word “chai.” We sent all the postcards
and persuasive essays along with about 300 pages of press clippings
about chai and Oregon Chai to the Editor of Merriam-Webster’s
Dictionary in Boston.
The Editor wrote to us, saying they’d never received such a vast
amount of evidence supporting the addition of one word. They added
“chai” to the eleventh edition of the Collegiate Dictionary, where it
appears on page 204!
To celebrate the news in Oregon Chai’s hometown of Portland,
Oregon, we conducted a contest for Portland Public Schools’ 3rd-graders
to win a pizza party. Students submitted words they invented, and the
winning entry garnered the pizza party for the student’s class, as well
as 350 dictionaries which Oregon Chai donated to the schools.
Happy Ending: Lots of local press coverage was generated in newspapers
and TV, and each of us have the 11th edition dictionary, wrapped in a
commemorative purple book cover resembling a box of Oregon Chai, on our
office shelves!
As PR experts, Campbell Consulting delivers editorial
media placements that improve your bottom line.
How do we deliver results? Here’s a complete list of our services.
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