Houlihan’s Restaurants, a chain that competes with the Appleby’s of the world, has taken a unique approach to marketing themselves online. Eschewing common advice to “go where the eyeballs are,” Houligan’s created a closed online community, letting it promote exclusive invitations to tasting events and other member-only events.
Backed by a 200,000-person email address list, the chain started by identifying its most active customers (those who participated in surveys, RSVPed to offers, etc.)
The chain’s community runs on the private-label Ning service. About 15 to 20 per cent are active members. “We gauge that by hits to the HQ site (when an e-mail is sent asking for feedback, to do a survey, etc),” Houligan’s digital marketing manager said.
(NOTE: During this beta period, this is the only case study using the Regions category. Case studies will be categorized by region by the end of February.)
The Great Bear Rainforest is one of the few truly wild places remaining in B.C. until a few years ago, there were no concrete, long-term plans in place to preserve it.
To try to pressure the provincial government to ratify a protection agreement, Greenpeace Canada, ForestEthics, and the Sierra Club of B.C. launched the “Keep the Promise: Save the Great Bear Rainforest” campaign in fall 2008. Capulet Communications was brought onboard to run the social media components, which included a Facebook group that attracted more than 4,000 members and became the hub for online activities. Other tactics used included a “Bear Your Soul” Flickr Contest, local blogger outreach, and both Twitter and YouTube presences.
In the end, the government promise to protect one third of the globally significant rainforest was fulfilled. Full Case Study
MobileSphere is a mobile messaging and telephony provider. Last year marked the launch of its new product, slydial. — a free service that lets users leave a voicemail on someone else’s cellphone — without actually ringing them. (Editor’s note: God, have we really come this “far”?!) SHIFT Communications created unique angles and pitches for each and every blogger it reached out to, helping them to see how and why their specific reader community would use slydial.
We also knew that the breadth of our outreach might preclude doing 1:1 interviews with every single blogger who expressed interest, so we made it a priority to develop a multimedia-heavy social media news release (SMR) — including cute videos.
Results: MobileSphere’s slydial service was covered in 381 blog posts. Read the Original Case Study
Joffrey’s Coffee and Tea Company launched a blogging campaign to drive traffic to their site. It launched the Joffrey’s Java Beta Test targeting bloggers and the tech-savvy audience. Bloggers signing up were provided with free samples of ‘Jamaican Me Crazy’ coffee and given trackback links to their blogs from the test site. The results were astonishing — more than 1,500 blogs signed up, numerous incoming links from multiple websites and coverage on leading blogs like Mashable, CNET and others in addition to heavy traditional media coverage. Case Study
Humana, one of America’s largest and most reputed health-care companies, is using social media to promote its new initiative: Freewheelin’, a bicycle sharing program with a community of health-friendly participants at its core. The social media campaign started with identifying biker groups in each city using Meetup.com and arranging group rides for word-of-mouth initiatives. Participants were given information sheets about Freewheelin and encouraged to upload their videos and photos. A Facebook page, a blog, blogger outreach program and Twitter stream were then adopted. The results – 41,000 miles ridden and 1.2 million calories burned in total Case Study
ABSOLUT Vodka decided to embrace social media to promote sales and a special one day event that would happen in a secret and exclusive location. The social media campaign started with the launch of a micro-site for ABSOLUT Vodka and was then extended to using a blog by Justin Broadbent, an outreach program, a teaser campaign, a facebook profile page acting as an event teaser and a twitter account to engage users. The results were astonishing as a large number of people signed up for the event in no time Case Study
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