PR 2.0 - Crazy Haired Eggs and the Power of Twitter

. Saturday, April 11, 2009
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MarketR and Toni&Guy Vancouver teamed up to deliver one of the most exciting egg hunts Vancouver has seen.
Toni&Guy Vancouver is one of MarketR's largest clients. This means almost all marketing, events, promotions, and PR is handled by the MarketR team.

After the success of the Toni&Guy Declares W.A.R. event, we were very excited to come up with another affair that was going to attract a lot of buzz.

After taking a look at the Calendar we immediately saw an opportunity during Easter. Egg hunts have been around for many years, but over time have become dull and are mostly geared towards young children.

The MarketR team came up with a way Toni&Guy could rejuvenate the Easter egg hunt in a way that was unique to Toni&Guy.

The 1st Annual Crazy Hair Toni&Guy Egg Hunt.

The Objective
Raising brand awareness while building upon the existing branding that Toni&Guy is a fun, and creative salon that is constantly thinking outside the box.

The Campaign
Over 40 plastic eggs were decorated with crazy hair by the Toni&Guy team and placed around the city. Inside each egg was chocolate and a Toni&Guy gift card valued at up to $100. (Values ranged from $5-$100).

Samples of the eggs:



Visit the Toni&Guy Egg Hunt FlickR page for pictures of all the eggs.


Results:
The Toni&Guy Crazy Hair Egg Hunt created large amounts of buzz for the salon.

People were talking about the egg hunt over Twitter.

(Twitter Screenshot)

The egg hunt was featured on multiple local blogs.

MartiniBoys.com

TinyBites.ca

"This was the coolest egg hunt I’ve heard about this year! 40 coiffed Easter eggs will be hidden all over Kitsilano and downtown Vancouver. Each contains the requisite chocolate plus a T&G gift card ranging in value from $5 - $100.

To join in on the scavenger hunt, follow the clues that will be tossed out Friday afternoon and Saturday morning on the Tony & Guy blog and their Twitter account."

FashionMagazine.com
Miss604.com
TheStyleSpy.com
People who found the eggs started posting pictures online.


The Toni&Guy Vancouver website doubled in traffic and the Toni&Guy Twitter account acquired 70 new followers. Because of the websites dynamic content, traffic continues to grow everyday.
(The first spike in traffic was when the campaign launched. Twitter, and Facebook messages drove traffic to the site. The second spike was organic traffic from referring sites talking about the campaign. The third spike was when the egg hunt actually happened. Community involvement such as conversations on twitter and users posting pictures of their egg finds drove traffic to the website.)

Take Aways:
-If you want your brand to be perceived as fun and creative, make sure your events and promotions are fun and creative. (Sounds simple, but so many companies don't follow this rule)

-Utilize your staff: We were able to harness the talent of the Toni&Guy team to decorate the eggs. Instead of paying a street team to promote the event on Robson St, we used the Toni&Guy staff who were already enthusiastic about the event and loved showing off the eggs they decorated.

-Do not underestimate the power of Twitter: All communications to local bloggers was done through Twitter. Once the event was covered by one popular blog the event was quickly covered by many others. By engaging Twitter users, conversations about the event grew organically both before and after the event.

Pushing VS Pulling

. Wednesday, April 8, 2009
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In marketing there are two common techniques, pushing and pulling.


Pushing means your marketing material is geared towards pushing your product onto the customer. This means offering incentives for employees or sales representatives to push your product or placing your product in areas were customers impulsively buy. Promotions are a form of push marketing, or advertisments that end with "buy now."

For example: Energy drinks love to use push marketing. You will see numerous street teams handing out products and promotions to potential customers. A lot of perks are given to retail stores to carry specific energy drinks, such as free tickets to events, price breaks, and merchandising material.



Pull, means your marketing strategy inspires consumers to demand your product. This technique requires you to use your head rather than your wallet. You need to come up with ways to relate with and engage your target market. Tools often used are sponsorship, product placement, PR stunts, and word of mouth.

For example: Apple Computers very rarely pushes. Instead they use product placement, PR and innovative advertisements to create consumer demand for their products. If you look at Apple computer advertising you'll notice that they never end with quotes such as "buy now" or "available at the following locations." The ads are never trying to push the product, instead the message is "this is who we are, this is our product, and this is what it does."

An energy drink company that focuses on pull marketing is Red Bull. By sponsoring events such as the soap box derby, concerts and Formula 1, Red Bull has created an image that is relatable to its target market.

Both Apple and Red Bull offer no price breaks to retail stores, and almost no perks for selling their product. However thanks to their powerful pull marketing strategies they offer something that other brands can't, guaranteed consumer demand. Stores like London Drugs know that although Apple and Red Bull products are priced higher and have smaller margins, the product is demanded by their customers. Because of this stores are forced to stock these brands.

So why don't all companies use pull marketing?
-It takes time to see results
-Consistency is key
-Coming up with creative ideas takes too much time and energy

These are the three biggest reasons small-medium sized companies don't use pull marketing.

Contact MarketR to learn how we can help you develop cost effective pull marketing strategies.

Did You Know - The Online Revolution

. Friday, April 3, 2009
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MarketR was formed because the Internet is in the process of revolutionizing the marketing industry. The Internet allows you to communicate with your target customers quickly, and cost effectively. Unfortunately many marketing agencies in Vancouver are struggling to understand how to use the internet effectively. Even worse is when agencies feel they should charge clients the same ridiculous fees as offline marketing.


Visit the MarketR - Main Page to learn how you can use the Internet to grow your business.

The Internet is growing at an incredibly rate. If your company is not harnessing the power of the Internet you will get left behind.