Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
The other morning I had the opportunity to catch up with my former manager and mentor Brad Stevens. At the end of 2009, Brad left Starbucks after seven years with the company where he served as vice president of U.S. Marketing and their first head of Customer Relationship Management, to join Mud Bay, a provider of healthy food, supplements, and supplies for dogs and cats.
I was excited to talk with Brad about his role as Executive Vice President of Stores and Sales for Mud Bay and to learn more about Mud Bay’s marketing activities. As EVP of Stores and Sales, Brad oversees four areas: store operations, marketing, category education and research.
Brad explained one of the reasons he is excited about joining Mud Bay, which operates 17 stores in the greater Puget Sound area, surrounds the powerful emotional connections people have with their pets and the specialty store’s commitment to helping dogs and cats lead long healthy lives.
“There is a growing awareness and appreciation for the importance of a healthy and nutritious diet for dogs and cats,” says Brad. “Oftentimes, common issues like hair balls in cats or itchy skin patches on dogs can be linked back to what they are eating. We have many examples of a customer consulting with our in-store specialists and altering a pet’s diet, and within a week or two, the animal is feeling better.”
According to Brad, experts’ understanding of the dietary needs of animals has really progressed over the years. “As a result, there is now an amazing array of nutritional formulas available for specific breeds. This is good because the nutritional needs of a tiny Chihuahua versus a Great Dane are significantly different.”
In terms of marketing, Mud Bay relies heavily on word of mouth. The retailer has a loyal group of customers who often refer friends and family to the store. One such customer is Jackie Barry, who has a 9-year-old Lynx Point cat, named Sushe, and has been shopping at Mud Bay for about 15 years.
Barry started out buying just cat toys and luxury pet items, but now purchases all of Sushe’s food and cat litter at Mud Bay. “Sushe was a very picky eater,” explains Barry. “I went to Mud Bay because the store provides descriptions of the different brands of cat food along with information about why some breeds of cats respond better to different ingredients.”
The people at Mud Bay gave Barry five or six little samples of food to try on Sushe. Barry continues, “I was able to find one that he loves. I trust the products I buy at Mud Bay. Finally, I have to say the people who work at Mud Bay also seem more engaged in serving their customers than people who work in the big box stores.”
In addition to relying on word-of-mouth marketing to drive business, the retailer also has a fan page on Facebook (www.facebook.com/mudbay/) and has strong relationships with veterinarians and other experts to generate awareness and drive demand for its products.
Brad’s new position sounds like a lot of fun. Clearly, the company is poised for continued success because it offers high-quality products, it employs informed and passionate people in their stores (and on the management team), and the category is growing as consumers become more aware of the link between healthy food and their pet’s health. It will be fun to watch the evolution of this business.
If you have a perspective on Mud Bay, I would love to hear from you!
We recently did some research to identify companies with more than 250,000 Facebook fans. The results were interesting. Some brand name companies (or organizations) fell significantly short of our expectations – while others have significantly more than 250,000 fans.
While we know fans will come and go, we thought it would be fun to compile a list of some of the top brand name companies, including some Seattle-based organizations, to create a snapshot of their Facebook fan numbers.
In addition to gathering data on current fan base numbers, we also reached out to a couple of these organizations to learn more about how they grew their Facebook fan bases.
Mariesa Stokes, account executive at Mckee Foods, the parent company for Little Debbie, explains the Little Debbie Facebook page went from 5,414 fans to 269,994 fans between October 3 and 10, 2009. “To drive this growth, the company took an integrated approach to marketing. It worked to drive Little Debbie lovers to the Facebook fan page though national advertising, PR, couponing, social media and consumer giveaways all at the same time – and it was overwhelmingly successful.”
Erica Berkovich, a communications coordinator with the National Hockey League, adds “Within the last six months we grew from zero to more than 260,000 fans after launching our Facebook page in Sept. 2009. To fuel this growth, we cross-promoted our page with all of our NHL Media Platforms, including NHL.com, NHL Radio, NHL Team Websites, NHL mobile as well as other social platforms.” She adds they are now considering what resources can be brought to increase the audience farther and faster.
We at Communiqué PR recently completed a campaign for a company where we helped it grow its Fan base by 219.2 percent in just 14 days.
As you consider the growth and management of your Facebook fan page, we hope you find this information to be helpful. Clearly, there is no silver bullet for growth; but it appears as if the key to success is pursuing an integrated approach and leveraging a variety of mediums to raise awareness of your page.
To highlight the looming concerns surrounding the growth in mobile data traffic and showcase the solutions available to operators to address this issue, Communiqué PR recently placed three contributed articles in prominent mobile wireless industry publications for Mobidia.
These articles enabled Chris Hill, vice president of marketing with Mobidia, to share his perspective on network congestion and provide a point of view on different solutions operators can deploy. The articles also position Mobidia as a thought leader in the mobile wireless space.
The three contributed articles include:
- RCR Wireless – published on March 22, 2010
- Wireless Business & Technology – published on March 31, 2010
- Wireless Week – published on April 4, 2010
As you can imagine, network congestion is placing tremendous strain on mobile operators and the pressure is not letting up. In fact, according to research firm Informa, mobile data traffic in 2010 is predicted to increase by 50 percent.
Why this staggering growth? The use of wireless laptops, netbooks and smartphones – such as iPhones, Android-based phones and BlackBerrys – are creating unparalleled levels of wireless data flow. And as congestion continues to increase, subscribers will feel the backlash with more dropped calls and slower connection speeds.
These articles provides insight on how mobile network operators can deploy technologies such as transport layer optimization (TCP) to increase the efficiency of a network, enable operators to maximize revenue opportunities and provide their subscribers with the best user experience possible.
For tips on writing bylined articles, read our past blog titled, “Tips for Writing a Byline Article.”
Chas Edwards, publisher and chief revenue officer at Digg, believes “we are living in the golden age of op-eds, thanks to Twitter, Word Press and Facebook.” I agree with Chas that social media gives everyone a platform to share a point view, but what about traditional op-ed articles in newspapers? Are they dead or alive?
This was a question a colleague and I pondered over lunch the other day. As the newspapers industry continues to struggle, what is the future of op-eds in these news outlets?
When I posed the question to Public Affairs Officer 1LT Darryl G. Frost in the Texas Army National Guard, I learned that op-eds in newspapers (along with other mediums) are working very well for his client – the commander of the 72nd Infantry Brigade Combat Team. “We use op-eds all the time to get our message out to Texans about how our mission is going over here in Iraq. So for it’s been working well.”
According to Frost, “Not only do we get a lot of feedback from the print paper, but our message is search engine-optimized online too. As newspapers post the links to their pages, our brigade gets fresh coverage online, which is where folks are getting their news these days too.”
By using op-eds, Frost is also able to leverage print, online blogs and social media to reach people on whatever news medium they’re relying on for information.
Craig Stevens, a public relations professional with the DCI Group concurs. On behalf of his clients he has placed a number of op-eds and uses each to broaden his clients’ messages even further.
“From each printed op-ed, we were able to drive additional earned media (TV and radio interviews),” says Stevens. “It helped build the clients’ brands. Also, with more online tools (blogs, Twitter, Facebook) we were able to push each piece and top line messages, even broader.
We found these examples to be quite powerful and they certainly support our experience when we worked to place an opinion piece by Dr. Thomas Hansen, CEO with Seattle Children’s Hospital in the Feb. 8, 2009 edition of the Seattle PI as well as op-ed articles about the future of the Washington Poison Center and how to save Mr. Yuk.
Given this, we’d encourage you to consider sharing your perspective in an op-ed piece as you look to achieve your communication objectives. Frost sums it up nicely, “Op-eds are definitely alive and well in my public affairs communications plan.”
Recently Ellen Petry Leanse, head of enterprise marking communications with Google, sent me an article entitled “Leadership in the Age of Transparency,” published by Harvard Business Review (HBR). Ellen was on a panel I chaired at Enterprise Social 2.0 in Amsterdam and the article supported many of the remarks made in January by Ellen and others about corporate leadership, transparency and responsibility.
The core premise of the HBR article is that companies who want to establish themselves as leaders need to take responsibility for externalities or spillovers. Termed by economists, externalities is the concept that with most economic transactions there is an impact on a party (or parties) not directly involved in the transaction.
An example of an externality would be a company manufacturing a product that creates pollution that impacts the entire community. Whereas if I fireproof my home, my neighbors also see a spillover benefit as the safety of their home is improved because we live in a dense neighborhood and their house is very close to mine.
The article asserts that in today’s world where we are able to measure so much more (e.g. environmental impact, human behavior, disease outbreak, etc.), and people are more vocal and connected, companies must proactively address externalities if they are going to suceed. It is a fascinating and well crafted argument.
Another particularly useful part of the article is a sidebar that focuses on how to decide what externalities to focus on and respond to. This information provides the reader with thought provoking questions, which immediately make the material in the article actionable.
Finally, I want to point out that Google is called out as a company doing a good job in understanding the impact of its behavior on the world and is actively striving to create positive outcomes or spillovers. An example of how the company is doing this is included in the article.
Again, if you have a minute, I would encourage you to read this article and consider how your business is impacting society; how you might measure the impact of your company; and how stakeholder expectations may have changed. Clearly Facebook and Twitter provide fabulous mechanisms for understanding others’ perceptions of the impact your corporate entity may be having on the world.
As the lines between traditional public relations and social media blur, we have been thinking about how our clients can leverage custom Facebook applications to drive awareness and engagement of their products and services.
We did some research to get a handle on new apps for Facebook and asked people to tell us which ones they felt are the best. Below you’ll find three examples of some unique apps created by very different companies.
Specifically, we chose to profile apps from Skittles; Art.com and Clorox Green Works ® – Green Heroes Grant Program. We liked the apps from these companies because they all had a clear purpose that benefited both parties (the company and the Facebook user). We also wanted to have one app that was focused on fun (Skittles); one that was clearly educational (Green Works); and one that added clear value to the consumer (Art.com).
Skittles
- With 4 million fans, Skittles has introduced a Facebook program called ‘Mob the Rainbow’ where fans are turning the Web into their playground to “cause some fun.” Skittle fans’ first mission was to make a valentine for an unsuspecting parking enforcement officer “somewhere in the U.S.”
- Through this program, Skittles collected more than 50,000 (digital and hand-made) valentines and surprised a parking enforcement officer on Valentine’s Day. The event was filmed and posted on Facebook for fans to enjoy.
- This is one of the first examples of a brand crowd-sourcing its fans to take action in the real world. Skittles will have a new mission for its “Mob the Rainbow” team each month. You can view the “Mob the Rainbow” program on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/skittles?v=app_275095758175.
Art.com, Inc.
- Art.com Inc., one of the world’s largest online retailers of quality wall art, recently introduced two new social media applications designed to offer consumers unique ways to shop for and create wall art, including a free iPhone app that allows users to preview their art selections on the walls of their own homes, and a free Facebook app that can turn personal photos into professionally-framed masterpieces. You can view the Art.com Facebook app at http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=195695830858.
- “These free apps allow users to take a photo of the wall area they wish to decorate with their iPhone and upload it to a personal “My Walls” gallery on art.com,” explains an Art.com Inc. spokesperson “In other words, people can preview what the product will look like on their walls before they purchase it. They can even send it to friends and family for review.”
- Finally, Art.com’s MyFrameShop Facebook application allows people to frame any Facebook photo with a custom-frame of their choosing.
- As far as results and statistics go: The application was launched on March 2, and already has 2,429 active users!
Clorox Green Works ® – Green Heroes Grant Program
- With help from the Jane Goodall Institute, the developers of Green Works® natural cleaners, developed a contest to reward and recognize individuals and groups that are “making their communities better – and greener – places to live.”
- Green Works selected finalists in three categories – Youth, Adult and School. They created a Facebook App that lets people on Facebook vote on finalists in each category. Visit http://www.facebook.com/greenworks?v=app_260755551340 to check out the app.
- The finalist in each category that receives the highest number of votes will win a $15,000 Green Heroes grant, courtesy of the makers of Green Works® products. Runners-up in each category will receive a $5,000 grant.
- One can vote for his/her Green Hero through April 18. It is also easy to see who is leading in the challenge and encourage “your friends to vote to help your Green Hero make it to the top.”
- Once you vote, you also have the opportunity to enter into a sweepstakes. There are 15 sweepstakes prizes, which will be selected at random. These prizes will include an autographed book by Dr. Jane Goodall, a t-shirt, a stuffed animal and coupons.
We hope that these examples of fun, educational or useful Facebook applications spark creative thinking about how you might attract users to engage with your brand, product or service. As strategic communicators, we see myriad ways one could publicize and drive usage of these applications.
Finally, if you have a favorite Facebook application we would love to hear about it. Tell us why you use it and how it enhances your life.