Case Studies
Social Media PR: Launch of Spring Partners springpad / Holiday 2008
Subudhi Consulting Group, Inc. (SCG), a strategic and tactical public relations, marketing and communications agency for companies, concepts and events, was retained in September 2008 by Spring Partners to develop and implement a strategic public relations campaign around the launch of their new application, springpad. Spring Partners, a Boston-based start-up and venturebacked software company dedicated to harnessing the power of the Web to simplify people’s lives, developed springpad, a free, Web-based platform designed as a set of online notebooks to help organize and share life's tasks and events.
The opportunity to work with a Web 2.0 company provided SCG with an exciting challenge. Spring Partners asked SCG to create initial buzz around the springpad beta application, as well as generate user engagement in the blogosphere to improve the application. By building pre-launch awareness with potential Life Experts and users in the target market, offering self-demos of the beta application and walk-throughs with CEO of Spring Partners, Jeff Janer, SCG helped Spring Partners obtain feedback to enhance the application before its release. In addition, after the launch of springpad, Spring Partners asked SCG to create measurable awareness of the application in the blogosphere to generate interest and users.
SCG developed a successful phased approach PR plan, which allowed Spring Partners time to incorporate feedback into the new springpad application. During the first two weeks, SCG focused on outreach to top-tier bloggers offering a preview of the application. The third and fourth weeks were dedicated to reaching out to the top-tier traditional media (as well as blogs associated with traditional media) for demos, and in the final week, coinciding with the issue of the press release, SCG contacted all blogs and traditional media to obtain demos for Spring Partners.
Blog sites have evolved over the last few years to include millions of active readers and contributors from all avenues of life. To develop personal relationships within this new realm of media, and understand blogger preferences, SCG attended the BlogHer Conference, the world’s largest conference for bloggers.
The public relations plan to launch springpad targeted audiences in eight consumer verticals in the following categories: food, parenting, shopping, travel, women’s interest, productivity, moms and parents, and gifts. The audiences were relevant to drawing users to Spring Partners’ holiday springpads designed to assist with meal planning, gift giving and travel planning. Traditional media outlets and blogs within these consumer verticals were selected and tiered based upon relevance and ranking. Furthermore, within each media outlet, editors, beat reporters and bloggers were chosen on their beat and past coverage of new and emerging technology. The final media list for the springpad launch was comprised of more than 200 qualified members of the press and blogger communities.
For the development of the springpad press release, SCG worked closely with the Spring Partners team to ensure clear and precise messaging. In addition, during the materials development stage, SCG produced a backgrounder and specialized boilerplate. In preparation for release distribution across Business Wire, the global market leader in commercial news distribution, SCG advised Spring Partners on distribution circuits and timing, selected tailored tags, wrote a caption to accompany the screenshot of springpad and optimized the release for search. SCG distributed the final draft of the press release “New springpad Online Notebooks Help You Survive the Holiday Season,” via Business Wire’s Enhanced Online News (EON) Delivery Platform on November 12, 2008 at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
The customized pitch that SCG developed for the launch focused on the life-management aspect of springpad, positioning it as the perfect tool to use around the holidays to simplify everything from meal planning to gift giving. The pitch was distributed to top-tier traditional media, followed by second-tier, to secure individual demonstrations of the application with Jeff Janer, CEO of Spring Partners. SCG followed-up with personal phone calls to the toptier media list. As a result of this outreach, SCG secured four traditional media demos for Spring Partners with USA Today, Real Simple, Travelgirl and Xconomy. In addition, core pitches and customized introductions to bloggers were developed and distributed to top-tier blogs and selected second-tier blogs. As a result of this outreach to blogs, SCG secured six media demos for Spring Partners with Web Worker Daily, Entrepreneur Mom, Resourceful Mommy, Mom Cooks, Tools-for-Thought, and Mom Salon.
Blog outreach highlights included featured blog posts on Web Worker Daily— “Springpad Online Notebooks Help Get Things Done,” LifeHacker— “Springpad: A User-Friendly Notebook,” and Mashable— “Yet Another Web-Based GTD Organizer—Springpad.” Throughout the duration of the campaign, SCG secured an astounding 45 media hits on high traffic blogs and media outlets. Traditional media highlights included feature stories in the Boston Business Journal—“Boston startup Springs to life,” Xconomy— “Springpad Wants to Be Your Online Home for the Holidays, And After,” and Examiner.com—“Springpad Helps You Get Things Done.”
By demonstrating an understanding of how to work with social media as well as developing a tight execution plan and targeted messaging, SCG’s public relations campaign resulted in greater name recognition and increased awareness for the springpad application.
Traffic on the Spring Partners’ site increased from 1,700 unique visitors before SCG’s PR campaign to almost 33,000 unique visitors during the campaign.
