Category: Case Studies

What’s in Your Media Kit?

Clairemont InternBlog, Case Studies, Raleigh PR Agency, ,

As most PR experts know, pitching to the media can sometimes be a daunting task. But at Clairemont, we try to bypass typical roadblocks and adopt a spicier approach with creative media kits. Not only does it make the mission more fun, we also have much greater success garnering media attention! Take a gander at these two media kits that we created for Briar Chapel’s 7th Annual Pepper Festival in 2014 and Triangle Family Services’ 2012 Gingerbread Benefit.

The Briar Chapel Pepper Festival: Spice up your stories this fall! 

Instead of presenting a run-of-the-mill media kit to secure coverage for the Briar Chapel Pepper Festival, Clairemont chose a different tactic. In an email-saturated media market, we crafted a quirky approach to nab the attention of on-the-go reporters. Our “pepper-themed” media kit that showcased pepper-themed foods and accessories, all from Clairemont clients, including the following:

  • Cape Fear Salsa Verde, Jalapeno Cheddar Crackers and Ghost Pepper Sauce from Lowes Foods made by local food artisans
  • Fresh, local peppers from Papa Spud’s
  • Annual Pepper Festival t-shirt provided by Briar Chapel and Abundance NC
  • Pint glass and gift card from T.MAC Restaurants
  • Free shake coupon and “Shake Out Cancer” t-shirt courtesy of PDQ

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The coordinating news release, fact sheets, media alerts and community calendar postings incorporated highly themed verbiage, inviting the media to “spice up” the weekend and “heat up” their fall stories with the Pepper Festival. Clairemont incorporated the media kit as part of an overall strategy to secure at least seven blogs and 10 local news stories about the Pepper Festival, to boost the festival attendance by 30 percent and to increase Briar Chapel’s online visibility.

The 7th Annual Pepper Festival proved to be a spicy hot success, an event that surpassed expectations. In addition to meeting each objective, we also revitalized the Pepper Festival, garnered top attendance and placed Briar Chapel back on the map for media coverage.

Triangle Family Services 10th Annual Gingerbread Benefit: Christmas in July! 

The Annual Gingerbread Benefit is the main fundraising event for Triangle Family Services, a United Way of the Greater Triangle partner agency with the mission of “Building a Stronger Community by Strengthening the Family.” As 2012 welcomed the 10th annual benefit and Clairemont’s third consecutive year working with the organization, our team knew we had to make it more successful than ever. Much like the Pepper Festival media kit, Clairemont chose to take advantage of the delicious gingerbread theme to snag media attention.

Taking a proactive approach to media pitching, we celebrated “Christmas in July” by targeting long-lead regional outlets with the creative media kits. The gingerbread-themed kits featured a custom 10th Annual Gingerbread Benefit canvas tote bag filled with goodies, including gingerbread man lollipops, make your own gingerbread man stickers and a “recipe” providing facts about Triangle Family Services.

tfs2012 media kit (1)

Clairemont successfully got the media into the holiday spirit with a distinctive gingerbread-themed pitch. The team secured a wide range of local and regional news stories, including Southern Living Magazine, Our State Magazine and Carolina Parent Magazine, strengthening the brand of Triangle Family Services and the Gingerbread Benefit. Triangle Family Services was pleased with the results, and Executive Director Alice Lutz said, “People kept telling us that everywhere they turned, they saw news coverage of the Gingerbread Benefit.”

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What’s in your media kit? Instead of providing the media with an everyday pitch, considering “spicing up” your presentation to get noticed!

 

 

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What Does a PR Agency Do? T.MAC Restaurant Opening

Sarah HattmanBlog, Case Studies, Public Relations, Restaurant PR + Hospitality PR, , ,

Client: T.MAC

Situational Analysis: The original T.MAC was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1979. More than 30 years later the company has grown to include 30 restaurants – 25 of which are in Georgia. With the majority of its restaurants located in its home state, it is no surprise that T.MAC is well known there. However, T.MAC executives realized the company’s brand recognition wasn’t as strong outside of Georgia.

Until 2014, T.MAC was known as Taco Mac. In the restaurant’s early days, the founders had enough money to revamp the kitchen or change the sign outside the building that was once home to a taco stand. Ultimately, the kitchen remodel won and Taco Mac was born. The problem is that Taco Mac is known for its signature wings, not tacos. In fact, there is only one taco on its menu. T.MAC dropped the “aco” before it opened its first Triangle restaurant in Cary, but its team of executives knew they needed to do more to establish brand recognition in the months leading up to its opening, and they hired Clairemont Communications.

Planning: Based on extensive primary and secondary research, Clairemont established the objectives as follows:

  1. Develop local community relationships with T.MAC ahead of the opening, engaging at least 40 community influencers.
  2. Introduce media to T.MAC, securing at least 10 local print news stories and 25 blog and social media posts.
  3. Arrange meetings with local high schools and facilitate at least two sponsorships.
  4. Select two local non-profit organizations and donate a portion of opening week proceeds to those organizations.

Execution: In order to effectively meet the primary objectives, Clairemont focused its efforts on the following areas:

  • Local High School Sponsorships: By building relationships with local schools,  T.MAC was able to introduce itself to Cary families as part of the community and position itself as a place to hang out with teammates, friends and family. With a fall opening of the restaurant, high school football sponsorships provided opportunities to show T.MAC’s community involvement and give Cary families a reason to check out the restaurant.
  • Clairemont Social: Clairemont hosted a T.MAC social at The Clairemont House. The purpose was to give our network of contacts and influencers the opportunity to learn more about T.MAC, sample food from the menu and taste its local beer offerings and meet the T.MAC team. We hosted approximately 60 guests including media and local personalities, local business owners, hospitality professionals, leaders in the community, bloggers and foodies.
  • Media Preview Lunch: We invited targeted media to a special preview lunch at the restaurant two days prior to the opening. This allowed media to preview the restaurant and meet on-one-one with key members of the T.MAC team.
  • VIP Preview: Clairemont compiled a list of city officials, dignitaries, local media and local university administration for T.MAC to invite to special VIP dinner the evening before T.MAC opened to the public. T.MAC hosted 125 VIP’s who were able to sample the menu and beer selection for the complete T.MAC “experience.”
  • Check Presentation Event: Before T.MAC’s opening, Clairemont arranged and recommended two local non-profit organizations for T.MAC to support with money raised during the restaurant’s opening week. Less than a month after its opening, T.MAC donated $2,000 to both Life Experiences and JDFR each of the organizations. Clairemont arranged at check presentation ceremony and invited media to attend the event highlighting T.MAC as business that supports the community it serves.

Evaluation: The creative, tiered campaign exceeded expectations by engaging more than 75 target community influencers at the social at The Clairemont House, friends and family night and the VIP preview. We exceeded our goal media coverage and secured 10 traditional media placements 38 social media and blog posts, introducing T.MAC to the area. We also exceeded our goal and secured sponsorships with three local high schools. Clairemont met its goal and arranged for T.MAC to donate money to two local non-profit organizations that support the community.

We anticipate that we’ll continue to work on our goal of trying all of the beers that T.MAC has on tap for at least a few more months! In the meantime, we hope you enjoyed this Tasty Tuesday post, and stay tuned for more restaurant PR case studies that showcase the work Clairemont is doing with a variety of types of food service organizations.

Pilsner Glass

 

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What does a PR agency do? Home Interiors Facebook Campaign

Clairemont InternBlog, Case Studies, Furniture PR, , ,

Clairemont Communications has extensive experience in furniture public relations and building strategic PR plans for home decor brands, interior designers and furniture manufacturers. As our team celebrates our 5th anniversary, we are revisiting some of our most favorite projects since launching in 2010. Here’s one:

Client: Thomasville Furniture 

Background: Thomasville Furniture, established in 1904 and a leading name in home furnishings, was confronted by the challenges of economic downturn. Faced with a reduced marketing, advertising and media relations budget, Thomasville turned to Clairemont Communications for help. After evaluating social media networks and confirming Facebook’s significant potential as a customer engagement channel for the company, we assumed management of the company’s Facebook page in July 2010.

Objectives: Clairemont met the client’s request to build brand awareness during Thomasville’s annual Memorial Day Sale by conceptualizing the Ready to Refresh $10,000 Giveaway. Our objectives included the following:

  • Leverage giveaway to build brand and sale awareness by increasing Facebook fan count by 10,000 likes during the promotional period.
  • Spread the story of Thomasville Furniture and its Memorial Day Sale via Facebook, creating at least one million total daily impressions and a total daily reach of 300,000 users.
  • Capture 75,000 giveaway entries as consumer leads for Memorial Day Sale and future sale marketing.

Method: Seeking a major fan increase as part of a larger strategy to build a younger customer base, this six-week-long promotion that was integrated with other online and offline tactics to maximize engagement. Clairemont built and managed a customer application to host the giveaway using the social engagement platform Shoutlet. Working with the Shoutlet team and a graphic designer, we conceptualized and directed the creation of a custom graphics for the giveaway, incorporating the designs into the application, optimized for desktop and mobile use. To facilitate our objective of leveraging the giveaway to increase page likes, impressions and reach, we built a sharing component into the giveaway application, so that fans could earn extra entries.

Creativity: To emphasize the affordability of Thomasville Furniture, Clairemont shared beautiful photography – which was also featured in the Memorial Day Sale catalog – showcasing rooms decorated with Thomasville Furniture for $10,000 or less. Additionally, we created and shared collage boards showing fans assortments of products totaling $10,000. With these two tactics, Clairemont sough to help fans visualize the amount of stylish furniture available at Thomasville within the $10,000 price range.

To engage users on the page, we also created ten word graphics, such as “Imagine what $10,000 will do to refresh your home,” and “Keep calm and redecorate,” which prompted conversation on the page. Custom-designed cover photos promoting the giveaway were updated bi-weekly to keep page content fresh. Lastly, coordinated marketing efforts separate from Facebook promoted the giveaway through regular email blasts, on Thomasville.com and in the Memorial Day catalog.

Evaluation:

1. Leverage giveaway to build brand and sale awareness by increasing Facebook fan count by 10,000 likes.

  • During the duration of the giveaway, Thomasville’s Facebook fan count increased by nearly 11,000 likes, exceeding our original goal of 10,000.

2. Spread the story of Thomasville Furniture and its Memorial Day Sale via Facebook, creating at least one million total daily impressions and a total daily reach of 300,000 users.

  • The giveaway successfully increased key metrics on Facebook, allowing us to exceed our original objectives with more than one million total daily impressions and a total daily reach of approximately 500,000. Strategic postings and captivating content successfully increased the page’s engagement, with nearly 25,000 more daily engaged users throughout the six-week-long promotion than the weeks prior to the giveaway.

3. Capture 75,000 giveaway entries as consumer leads for Memorial Day Sale and future sale marketing.

  • Additionally, with more than 134,000 entries, the giveaway successfully captured more than 100,000 new consumer leads for Thomasville, surpassing our goal of 75,000 new leads.

As we look back at this work from just a few years ago, we realize how much has changed on how Facebook can be used for promotional purposes. Have you found the same to be true? Do you long for the old Facebook that had seemingly less rules?

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What does a PR agency do? Real Estate PR Case Study

Jasmin SessomsAwards, Blog, Case Studies, Real Estate PR, , , , ,

In the spirit of #ThrowBackThursday, here’s a real estate PR case study that features a January 2012 article in the Wall Street Journal. The story was a result of the media strategy that Clairemont devised and executed for the client. Our team is proud to continue work with Nash-Newland and Newland Communities.

Client: Nash-Newland

Planning: Newland Real Estate Group based in San Diego and North American Sekisui House (Nash) based in Osaka, Japan formed a new joint venture in 2012, Nash-Newland, and acquired the largest operating portfolio of residential master-planned communities in the United States. The joint venture purchased the interests of the California Public employee’s Retirement System (calPERS) and the American Newland Communities in 28 master-planned communities, located in 15 markets and 11 states.

With the negotiations being highly confidential until the finalization of the agreement, NASH-NEWLAND turned to Clairemont Communications to devise a media relations strategy, counsel executives on when to release information about the joint venture and how to keep it confidential until the right time. Clairemont extensively researched what the real estate beat reporters of these outlets had written, the types of merger and acquisition stories they had produced and their professional backgrounds to determine who had experience covering similar joint ventures.

Objectives: The Clairemont team was tasked with getting news coverage under highly confidential circumstances. Specifically we identified the following as key strategies:

  1. Break the news in a national business media outlet. NASH-NEWLAND wanted the story to break in the outlet that would have the most significant business impact and reach the most readers without ignoring the other two considerations. Due to the complexity of the joint venture and assets involved, in addition to selecting the right media outlet, we needed to target a reporter who had enough understanding of the real estate industry as well as experience writing about the financial aspects of merges and acquisitions.
  2. Secure a trade story and garner coverage in five regional news outlets.

Execution: Clairemont was able to get the attention of Robbie Whelman at the Wall Street Journal with our first pitch call to him. Before telling him the companies involved, we could only share the types of organizations and give him an indication of the scope of the deal. He agreed to go under embargo, and from there we outlined the timing of our other outreach around the Wall Street Journal being issued. This included issuing a news release on Business Wire, pitching the story to additional media contacts and NASH-NEWLAND’s priority trade magazine contact.

Clairemont was also responsible for preparing media materials, answering questions from regional and other types of media. We worked with the NASH-NEWLAND executives on messaging, interview preparation, interview coordination and media follow-up needs.

Results: To the satisfaction of our clients, Clairemont secured a spot in the Wall Street Journal – the first choice to break the story- on the front page of the property report section. Additionally, we secured coverage in all of our priority outlets of Associated Press, Marketwatch and Bloomberg, as well as Reuters. Seven total stories appeared in these outlets, exceeding our goal of one national business article.

We exceed our goal of five regional stories with the placement of 11 articles. Additionally, there were 14 various online stories that were based on business and regional coverage.

This campaign earned Clairemont a Best in Division award from Raleigh Public Relations Society and an Award of Excellence from the North Carolina chapter of Public Relations Society of America.

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The Beauty of Raleigh PR: Day 10 – Case Studies

Jasmin SessomsBlog, Case Studies, Entry-Level PR Job,

PR 101: How to Write a Case Study

On my first day at Clairemont, I was introduced to writing case studies. One of my first assignments was to read and analyze previous case studies written by my Clairemont colleagues and complete three on my own.

When Mrs. Hughens gave me this task, I figured it wouldn’t be too difficult. I didn’t realize that the binders for each client would weigh ten pounds and include more than 100 pages – all of which I had to read, summarize and compress into two short pages.

Writing a great case study sounds like a lot of work, doesn’t it? It is. Don’t let it stop you from doing it!

It might feel less cumbersome if you break it into sections.

*Situational Analysis – Who is the client? What are the goals? How did you design the campaign or tactic to help reach the goal?

* Research – What information did you gather to better understand the client, target audiences, challenges, etc., and how did you gather it?

* Planning – Once you completed the research, how did you use it to develop a campaign or tactic that would benefit your client? How did you establish your objectives?

* Execution – What steps did you take to carry out your plan?

* Evaluation – Was the plan successful? How did you measure the success? What would you do differently?

Writing a case study is a great way to increase credibility with potential clients. Since Clairemont is an award-winning agency, I think its important to add these studies to our website. It is also a great way for me to quickly understand Clairemont’s clients and outstanding work.

 

Editor’s Note: Clairemont enthusiastically welcomes Jasmin Sessoms to our team! Follow this former beauty queen’s journey as she documents her first 30 days in a Raleigh PR agency.

 

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