Company: Grow Marketing Company Description: Grow Marketing crafts compelling brand experiences that forge emotional connections, fuel loyalty and build communities of brand advocates. Nomination Category: Corporate Communications, Investor Relations, & Public Relations Categories Nomination Sub Category: Best Communications or PR Campaign
Nomination Title: Zafu.com Consumer Launch
- Tell the story about this nominated campaign since January 1 2007 (up to 500 words). Focus on specific accomplishments, and relate these accomplishments to past performance or industry norms. Be sure to mention obstacles overcome, innovations or discoveries made, and outcomes:
Mission
In August 2006, Zafu.com set out to change the way women shop through the launch of their groundbreaking jeans “fit finder.” Essentially a “Match.com” for women and their jeans, women answer 11 simple questions online with no measurements required, and Zafu identifies jeans available on the market that best suit their style, size and fit preferences. In 2007, Zafu launched additional fit finders for products including plus jeans, bras, and casual and dress pants. Grow Marketing partnered with Zafu from the time of launch through the summer of 2007 to help create awareness, interest, and buzz around this new, never-before-seen site and service – and the results were tremendous.
Grow’s charge was to take a brand from the unknown and develop it into becoming the premiere and go-to resource for women when it comes to issues of blending fit and fashion. We aimed to help make Zafu relevant and recognizable in consumers’ lives when shopping for pants and intimate apparel.
Strategy, Planning & Execution
Grow implemented a battery of innovative PR tactics and designed a robust, efficient and effective campaign that generated awareness, built brand caché and created buzz around this revolutionary new service. • Influenced the Influencers o In order to ensure success, Grow first targeted key media mouthpieces to the entire fashion, retail and online community. Briefings and meetings were scheduled weeks prior to the site’s official launch to engage industry analysts and ready them as possible references. • Secured a Trade Exclusive o Grow secured an exclusive with WWD to time with the launch of the site. • Landed Face-to-Face Introductions and Meetings o We sent Rob Holloway, Zafu Founder and CEO, to New York on a whirlwind, week-long media tour to garner one-on-one face time with key fashion, online retail and women’s interest reporters at top national long-lead publications, dailies, weeklies, and fashion-based Web sites, as well as producers for nationally syndicated lifestyle programs.
• Executed Timed, Strategic Announcements o Although we don’t rely on press releases to sufficiently convey our news, we feel they are a necessary and worthwhile media tactic when aiming to disseminate news quickly and broadly. o Grow established a rigorous and compelling series of news releases* to cross the wire throughout the year, keeping news fresh and constant. A copy of each of the 6 press releases is enclosed.
• Secured a Consumer Exclusive o With the success of the jeans fit finder and significant brand awareness under its belt, Zafu was primed for a consumer exclusive touting the new bra fit finder. Grow secured an exclusive with DailyCandy that ran on July 18, 2007, the first of many outlets to report on Zafu’s bra service in a significant way. • Engaged Bloggers, the New Media Elite o Grow worked with and pitched bloggers as media, as the blogosphere served as a natural environment in which to spark conversation and awareness around Zafu. Grow stayed continually connected to and engaged with bloggers by reaching out to fashion/consumer blogs on a consistent basis. Grow joined many conversations and chat rooms, and posted many comments to spread the word of Zafu and the solutions it provides to legendary fit and fashion challenges.
Results
The press coverage resulting from Grow’s campaign was unprecedented. The campaign was smart, strategic, targeted, and relentless - resulting in 88,744,410 media impressions! In addition, the site has enjoyed more than 2 million visitors to date, as media coverage has played a key role in growing public awareness. A full clips packet of all press generated is enclosed.
Key Zafu Spikes in Traffic Relative to Press Hits (the ultimate measure of success!): o Atlanta Journal Constitution (Oct. ‘06): 400% increase in traffic day of; 200% increase next 2 days o New York Times (Nov. ‘06): 600% increase in traffic day of; 300% next day; 50% sustained increase o Time (Dec. ’06), InStyle and Real Simple (Jan. ‘07): 50% sustained increase o DailyCandy.com (Jul. ’07), O, The Oprah Magazine, InStyle, Woman’s Day, USA Today (Aug. ’07): 200% month-long increased traffic spike
- List hyperlinks to any online news stories, press releases, or other documents that support the claims made in the section above. IMPORTANT: Begin each link with http://, and enclose each link in square brackets; for example, [http://www.youraddress.com]:
http://www-grow-marketing.com
Supporting materials for this entry were submitted offline.
- Provide a brief (up to 100 words) biography about the leader(s) of the team that carried out this campaign:
Gabrey Means, Creative Director at Grow Marketing, possesses over 15 years of non-traditional marketing expertise. Before launching Grow in 2001, she worked at Banana Republic as Experiential Marketing Director, the leader of the cross-functional team charged with revolutionizing the customer experience. She also worked at GQ as in-house creative on co-branded programs.
Cassie Hughes, Strategy Director at Grow Marketing, has over 20 years of marketing and publicity experience. Prior to co-founding Grow, she was Managing Director at Ammo Marketing; and has served as Vice President, Client Services for Convergence Media Group. She also created award-winning marketing and publicity programs during her days at Levi Strauss & Co.
|