Tag: PR social media

What Does a PR Agency Do? Briar Chapel’s Spicy App

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More exposure and higher attendance were the goals of the Briar Chapel marketing team as it planned its 9th Annual Pepper Festival to support North Carolina agriculture. Briar Chapel is one of the largest master-planned green communities in Raleigh-Durham and part of Newland Communities, the country’s largest private residential real estate developer. It turned to Clairemont Communications to reengage past festival participants and grab the attention of new audiences.

Strategy

Clairemont spiced up Briar Chapel’s approach with a creative social media personality quiz designed to promote the Pepper Festival to Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill residents. Clairemont had two objectives in mind: to increase visibility for the Pepper Festival and build third-party credibility for the event.

Execution

Spark Social Sharing

Clairemont wanted to expand the event’s social media strategy to incorporate a fun, interactive approach that would attract audiences untapped by traditional efforts. We researched the most effective types of personality quizzes and crafted a short online experience that would encourage users to share with a network of friends across multiple platforms, hence organically expanding the festival’s visibility.

“How Spicy Is Your Personality?” Quiz!

Rather than settle for traditional promotions, Clairemont turned up the heat to design an interactive social media quiz that piqued viewers’ interest with a play on words: “How Spicy is Your Personality?” For an unexpected twist, we crafted seven short questions that had little connection with festivals, food, peppers or Briar Chapel. Instead, the quiz featured queries like “What’s your getaway vehicle?” or “Pick Your Poison” – a question followed by four beverage choices ranging from wine to milk with cookies. The quiz posed other clever questions like “If your pants were on fire, you would …” and “your favorite hot spot is …” to emphasize the heat theme of the event. Clairemont peppered the content with twists of wit and humor along with themed verbiage connected to spice, fire and heat commensurate with the Pepper Festival.

The Spicy Personality Results

Once users took the quiz, they found results that stretched beyond the expected, standard “mild, medium or hot” descriptions. Instead, Clairemont crafted five positive personality types that featured popular phrases or song lyrics related to heat, fire and smoke. These descriptions told people if they were a Mild Child, a Sweet Heat, a Spiced Just Right, a Firecracker or a Flamethrower, which contributed to our goal of unexpected and quirky content.

Participants could then share their prescription and accompanying image on Facebook, encouraging friends to take the quiz as well. The quiz also included an opportunity for viewers to enter for a chance to win tickets to the 2016 Pepper Festival, along with details and links to the festival.

Results

Clairemont exceeded each of its objectives of quiz shares, visits and entries, boosted attendance by 10 percent and rolled out the largest festival to date.

The work Clairemont Communications conducted in partnership with Briar Chapel earned an Award of Excellence for Creative Tactics and an Honorable Mention for Social Media from the North Carolina Public Relations Society of America. We are proud that this campaign represents two of the 175 awards we’ve received since starting Clairemont in 2010.

To read more about the work we do with clients, please visit the case study section of our blog.

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What Does a PR Agency Do? A Taste of Italy at Il Palio

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Il Palio, Chapel Hill’s AAA-rated Four Diamond Italian restaurant, was in the midst of a $1 million renovation, featuring a fresh look and a revamped menu by its new chef, Teddy Diggs. Il Palio turned to Clairemont Communications to create a social media strategy that would refresh the restaurant’s image and win the hearts of young diners.

Social Media Strategy

Clairemont’s “Taste of Italy” campaign leveraged the clout of food and culinary influencers to generate awareness among the target demographic – millennial diners – and increase traffic to Il Palio. Clairemont chose to harness the broad reach of social media to efficiently and rapidly boost Il Palio’s image to a large audience.

Execution

VIP dinners at Il Palio.

Customized Experiences: Il Palio hosted a “Foodie Funday” dinner where Chef Teddy selected dishes for each blogger’s preferences. Who wouldn’t want the chef’s creation customized just for you? Chef Teddy also invited a prominent blogger into the kitchen to co-create a proprietary pizza that he named after her and featured on his menu. Chef Teddy handcrafted The Perfect Date Night Dinner for another blogger and his wife. The personalized touch struck home, producing a flurry of coverage on social media and blogs, and securing reservations.

Instagram Takeovers: To reach broader audiences, Clairemont crafted Instagram takeovers to share a visual “taste” of Teddy’s cooking. Chef Teddy helmed the Instagram of StarChefs – a culinary publication with more than 30,000 followers – during his annual trip to Italy, unveiling first his inspiration abroad and then the application back at Il Palio. In preparation for the Atlanta Food and Wine Festival, he creatively shared “a day in the life of a man who plays with fire,” with the festival’s Instagram followers, showcasing his wood-fired grill dishes. These partnerships increased visibility and boost Il Palio’s own social media metrics.

Il Palio’s Instagram Takeover with StarChefs.

Results

Il Palio – boosted by diner reviews – earned a Gold Medal from food critics as a “2016 Best Restaurant in the Triangle.” Clairemont met every goal, exceeded expectations in addition to the following results:

  1. 10 media articles/posts, reaching a combined followership of more than 50,000 followers on Twitter alone
  2. Instagram takeovers in 2016 showcased the renovated restaurant, new menu and staff personality to approximately 45,000 followers

The work Clairemont Communications conducted in partnership with Il Palio earned a Best in Category in Social Media and an Award of Excellence in Social Media from the North Carolina Public Relations Society of America. It also earned a Platinum Award in Social Media from the Raleigh Public Relations Society. We are proud that this campaign represents two of the 175 awards we’ve received since starting Clairemont in 2010.

To read more about the work we do with clients, please visit the case study section of our blog.

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Award-Winning Social Media Campaigns

Dana PhelpsBlog, Case Studies, Social Media + Influencer Engagement, , , , , , Leave a Comment on Award-Winning Social Media Campaigns

The trends and best strategies for social media campaigns seem to change faster than our Facebook feed, but that’s an exciting challenge for us at Clairemont Communications. We’ve received 20 awards over the years in social media –eight Sir Walter Raleigh awards from the Raleigh Public Relations Society and an even dozen InSpire awards from the North Carolina chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (NCPRSA).

The InSpire Social Media awards we’ve received every year since 2011 include four Best in Category or Best in Show awards for one of our first social media clients, Thomasville Furniture. We began managing the company’s Facebook page in July 2010 at a time when social media for business was relatively new, after confirming Facebook’s potential as a customer engagement channel.

Established in 1904, Thomasville Furniture is a leading name in the home furnishings industry. We helped the company honor its long history by visually documenting its milestones with historic photos on its About page.

At the same time, we developed strategies to help younger customers understand Thomasville Furniture as a fashionable brand as well as a venerable one. Videos featuring younger actors and a more relaxed feel, and creative content about interior design increased the company’s 18 to 34-year old Facebook fans from 20 percent to 30 percent of the total fan base.

Our work with Thomasville Furniture exemplifies the passion that helped start Clairemont Communications — developing strategies that use both traditional and emerging forms of communications. One campaign for the company and its sister company Drexel Heritage combined local media and trade magazines with blog posts and Facebook content to boost brand recognition among consumers.

At Clairemont, we stay on top of new social media tools and their potential to help our clients. In 2015 we built and managed a customer application using the social engagement platform Shoutlet to host a special giveaway promotion for Thomasville. The company asked us to help it build brand awareness during its annual Memorial Day Sale; the resulting giveaway campaign increased its Facebook fan count by nearly 11,000 likes, created at least one million total daily impressions, and captured more than 100,000 new consumer leads.

A key to using social media effectively is understanding that it is not a broadcast medium; success comes from creating interaction and active engagement. We had confidence in our Memorial Day campaign because our previous experience managing Thomasville’s Facebook page had shown giveaways to be effective traffic-driving tools. In 2011 we promoted special giveaways throughout the year to build and sustain fan engagement. We also designed our interior design posts to get fans talking about their own design ideas. As a result, weekly interactions increased 155 percent, and the total Facebook fan base increased almost 178 percent from the previous year.

Since our work with Thomasville in Clairemont’s early history, we have had the pleasure to work with several other clients to develop social media strategies and support the day-to-day management of social media tactics. Examples of other client campaigns and our thoughts on emerging digital communications tools can be found on our blog under the social media category.

Maybe you love social media as much as we do. Or maybe keeping up with its  constant evolution feels daunting or too time-consuming. Either way, we’d love to help you put social media to work for your business! Email me at d@clairemontcommunications.com to schedule a call.

 

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Snapchat: From Nudes to Suits

Clairemont InternBlog, Public Relations, Social Media + Influencer Engagement, , , , , , , Leave a Comment on Snapchat: From Nudes to Suits

Editor’s Note: Blog written by our fabulous intern, Caroline Ellis.

When Snapchat was established almost four years ago, the premise was simple: correspond with friends via photos that last up to 10 seconds before they disappear. This type of technology has given social media a kind of impermanence discussed by Nathan Jurgenson in a post published on Snapchat’s blog.

Temporary Content: A New Side to Social Media

Snapchat introduced a concept known as “temporary social media.” Though a revolutionary approach, this idea also opened the doors for a more risqué use of the app, replacing the potential with an inappropriate stigma. In addition to the reputation Snapchat gained, there was that pesky little hack revealing that users’ photos were not deleted forever after 10 seconds, but instead these photos could be saved by friends unbeknownst to the users and uploaded online.

No longer was the reputation simply hearsay, but now consumers were legitimately concerned. Snapchat had to act quickly and effectively to restore its image. Over the course of its four-year run, Snapchat has evolved from a “sexting” app to business and lifestyle tool. Snapchat has foregone any illusion that users are unable to capture images, now alerting consumers when a friend takes a screen shot of their photo.

Stories: The Personal Side

The My Story feature, added in October of 2013, allowed users to share clips from their days with their friends. Disappearing after 24 hours, the My Story feature invited creativity with a literal day-to-day look at someone’s life. My Story created an environment where celebrities could enter the Snapchat world and allow their fans to see a personal and informal side of their lives.

Snapchat has become much more than a “selfie” app. In August of 2014 Snapchat launched Our Story— an expansion building off of the My Story foundation. This was the first time that users could see photos and videos from strangers around the world on their My Story feed. The premise of Our Story is to invite the collaboration of the Snapchat community in a particular part of the world to provide a glimpse into its daily life. Originally launched for the Electric Daisy Carnival, the feature allowed festival goers to upload their snaps for anyone to see. Snapchat’s next step was to expand to college campuses, establishing the application’s target demographic.

Discover: The Business Side

As Snapchat continues to evolve, the question becomes how they can appeal to a more professional audience as opposed to “selfie-obsessed teenagers?” The answer came in January when Snapchat introduced Discover. This addition to Snapchat allowed corporations–including the likes of Yahoo!, People, National Geographic, CNN and ESPN–to create interactive daily stories. The debut of this new feature allows users to stay updated with the latest headlines, scores and fashion trends all in the same place.

Of course the next factor in the equation is how small businesses can effectively use Snapchat. Perhaps it will come by way of the My Story feature with businesses using it to give clients a look into their everyday work lives. Maybe one day Our Story will showcase young professionals working in different cities around the world or will feature local businesses.

The future for Snapchat and small business is unsure, but one thing is certain: Snapchat has proven that it knows no limits, and this limitless mindset is what keeps it exciting.

Now it’s your turn.

Would you consider Snapchat as part of your marketing plan?

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Instead of Giving “The Finger”

Cherith AndesBlog, Public Relations, Social Media + Influencer Engagement, , , , , Leave a Comment on Instead of Giving “The Finger”

Facebook “Poke” Dies, Raising Another “Pointed” Question

After what might possibly be Facebook’s shortest-lived app, the infamous Facebook “poke joke” died a silent death on Friday, May 9—sans headstone, eulogy or even so much as commemorative post.

And rightly so, you’ll agree, after a quick peek at the facts.

As legend has it, Zuckerburg developed the new Facebook Poke app (not to be confused with the original poke feature)  in less than two weeks. This “new” version touted the ability to grace your friends with videos and photos that self-destructed after 10 seconds (yes, you got it. A direct Snapchat clone.) After its premiere in late 2012, Facebook’s iOS poke app zipped around the market for a whoppin’ 16 months before fizzling into the social media graveyard (accompanied by loud Zuckerburg family drama).

Sad Day.

Except not. Originally, the 2004 inaugural Facebook poke started as a little digital tug on the sleeve: “Don’t forget about me.” “I’m here…and thinking about you.” “NO, REALLY. MESSAGE ME ALREADY.”

And for the last half-decade, social media apps have followed suit, morphing into one big sleeve-yanking trick after another to garner the attention of our family, friends and followers. Snapchat, the obvious rival for the Facebook poke, appeals to our miniscule attention spans while Instagram satisfies our unspoken yen for endless visual stimulation.

But recently, social media has done an about-face. Rather than eliciting attention, we’re desperately trying to silence the noise.

Shut up? There’s a button for that.

Twitter, for instance, just introduced a new button that enables you to “mute” chatty followers from your feed. Zap. Instant silence. Another app, “Shut Up! The Red Button” available on Google Play, allows you to tell a nearby friend to pipe down with the tap of a  button. Enjoy a similar, albeit slightly more jarring, experience with Smosh’s “iShutUp” that yells “shut up” in response to any nearby noises.

We’re dying for ways to unplug with apps like Freedom or Anti-Social that impose timed internet blackouts on your laptop. And just think: after decades of inventing ways to burn the midnight oil, we’ve now created systems like SleepStation to force us to quiet our minds and nod off.

The Newest Craze: Nothing.

We can’t help but crave it: blessed, golden silence.

So the death of the “new” Facebook poke is certainly nothing to mourn. (Did anyone even know it existed?) Rather, the shift is a reminder for us to invest in meaningful communication. Meaningful communication: this self-defined concept bequeaths us with the freedom—the permission—to step back and reevaluate our time.

You may find that tweets truly are the glue in your long-distance friendships. Or your evening Facebook chat and random Snapchat streams actually strengthen the bond among your best girlfriends. That’s all ok. Better than ok.

Tweet it. Mean it.

The medium can be irrelevant; the message is critical. So don’t bother adopting every latest app fad (the Facebook poke being a prime example). Instead, choose whatever Insta-Snap-Book-Tweet-a-gram actually works for you and your friends, and then do it: invest in meaningful messages to those who matter.

And if you’re ever in doubt, I’m pretty sure the post office still manufactures them good ‘ole postage stamps (and Target has quite the collection of chic personal stationery). Just pointing that out.

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