Case Studies
Social Media PR Campaign: Spring Partners Valentine’s Day Planner 2009
Subudhi Consulting Group, Inc. (SCG), a strategic and tactical public relations, marketing and communications agency for companies, concepts and events, was retained in January 2009 by Spring Partners to develop and implement a strategic public relations campaign around their latest springpad online notebook. Spring Partners, a Boston-based start-up and venture-backed software company dedicated to harnessing the power of the Web to simplify people’s lives, developed springpad, a free, new Webbased platform designed as a set of online notebooks to help organize and share life’s tasks and events.
As a result of the success of the initial springpad launch, Spring Partners called upon SCG to develop a three-week public relations campaign that would focus on the Valentine’s Day launch of the latest springpad, the Date Night Planner, and generate user engagement with the application.
For the Date Night Planner launch, SCG’s public relations plan targeted publications with audiences most likely to benefit from, and make use of, an event and date planner in the following categories: productivity, shopping, moms, men’s interest, women’s interest, events/entertainment and singles. In-depth research produced 60 traditional media contacts and 15 blog contacts.
As the focus of the campaign for the planner was on Valentine’s Day and creating the perfect date night, SCG developed two customized pitches for the traditional media and blogs: a male perspective pitch with a focus on springpad as a solution to the difficulty of planning a romantic evening, and a female perspective pitch which focused on the ease of using springpad to plan an event. The pitch also offered suggestions to those planning on staying in, who could use the springpad Weekly Meal Planner to collect recipes and generate shopping lists to create romantic meals.
Working closely with the Spring Partners’ team, SCG developed a press release focusing on the value of the Date Night Planner in regard to organizing the evening in one place and using the planner to make dinner reservations, buy movie tickets, purchase gifts or get recommendations from favorite sites like Yelp and Open Table. The release “Make Valentine’s Day Stress Free with New Online Date Night Planner,” crossed Business Wire’s Enhanced Online News (EON) Delivery Platform on February 3, 2009 at 8:00 a.m. EDT.
SCG disseminated pitches and press release to 75 members of the targeted media lists, with the goal of securing coverage which would draw users to the application, as well as increase coverage and reviews. Building on media relationships from the launch of springpad, SCG followed-up with personal phone calls to 25 toptier traditional media to secure demos with Jeff Janer, Spring Partner CEO.
Despite the short duration of the campaign, SCG was able to successfully secure demos with the traditional media and blog coverage for Spring Partners. SCG secured four media demos with leading traditional media outlets like the Boston Globe and Redbook, as well as with Jason Tesauro, freelance writer for publications Match.com, Details and Maxim. A media demo was also secured with the new Boston-based dating publication, Massachusetts Singles Magazine.
In addition, SCG secured blog coverage for Spring Partners in featured reviews on top ranked blogs Geek Sugar and AskMen.com. Geek Sugar is the tech and gadget blog for the Sugar Network, which is comprised of 16 lifestyle and entertainment sites geared toward women, with a combined audience of over 8 million monthly unique visitors. AskMen.com is a leading men’s health and lifestyle Web site with 5 million monthly unique visitors.
Once again, SCG implemented a successful public relations campaign for Spring Partners that resulted in increased consumer awareness of their newest springpad notebook.
