At Maven, we are always looking to promote our clients in new and creative ways.  And when there is no “breaking” news to announce on behalf of your clients, a good PR firm will find ways to create their own.

Salon Vanity by Edmondo Blando on the 10! Show

Excel Physical Therapy and Fitness and Salon Vanity by Edmondo Blando, are two consumer clients whose clients include many brides-to-be looking to gear up for their big day.  Since June is the most popular month of the year to get married, we thought why not pitch a targeted broadcast segment focusing specifically on weddings? With broadcast coverage in mind, we approached the NBC 10! Show with the idea of launching a “wedding special” featuring both clients. The producers loved the idea of putting together a show about the hottest trends in weddings in the hottest month to get married. With a tight time line of three weeks, wedding special feature grew from two segments into an entire hour-long program dedicated to the hottest wedding trends – everything from flowers, dresses, dances, hair & makeup, wedding planners, fitness, food and more with an audience consisting entirely of brides-to-be. Maven and the NBC 10! team divided and conquered the show and all of its various components.

Excel Physical Therapy and Fitness on the 10! Show

In addition to our two clients, Maven secured fabulous wedding consultant Vinnie D’Adamo of Kaleidoscope Solutions to cover wedding planning trends, and high end bridal boutique Bridals by Danielle to showcase the hottest wedding dress trends for the season. We outlined the segments, developed key messages for guests, media trained the spokesperson and practiced run-throughs with all our segment guests to ensure the show was flawless.

As well as conducting the orchestra of semi-live television (the 10! Show is taped at 10am as if live but then plays as is at 11am), Maven was charged with filling the 50-seat audience entirely with brides-to-be and assemble a gift bag for each. We ended the bride search with a waiting list 15 brides deep and a very excited studio audience. In addition, gift bags for the audience turned out wonderfully with a value of more than $500 each.

The icing on the wedding cake was a special giveaway to one lucky bride in the audience. Maven was able to secure:

A three-day/2-night Luxury Included® Honeymoon to any of the twelve Sandals Resorts with locations in Jamaica, Antigua, St. Lucia and the Bahamas. The lucky couple’s Luxury Included® stay includes lavish accommodations, all meals, including gourmet dining and anytime snacks, premium brand beverages, daily & nightly entertainment, an array of land and water-sports including snorkeling and scuba, gratuities, and transfers to and from the resort designated airport.

The excited Sandals Resorts' winner!

The brides had no idea about their chance to win this special getaway when signing up for the show, but they were thrilled to find out! The winner was thrilled and Maven basked in its once in a lifetime Oprah-inspired moment.

Watch our clients’ segments below as seen by the estimated 27,000 daily viewers of the 10! Show. Maven placed the videos of their segments on their respective websites and facebook pages and made sure people saw how great they were and are! We owe the 10! Show team and everyone who helped out a HUGE thank you! Please visit the websites of those who donated to the gift bags at the end of this post. In addition, you can find more behind the scenes photos on Maven’s facebook page.

Everyone was elated with how the wedding special turned out, especially and most importantly, our clients, who were thrilled with the exposure the segment provided.

Gift Bag Contributors:

Sandals Resorts

Beke Beau

Bellezza Veils

Brandywine Valley Talent

Bridals by Danielle

Byers’ Choice, LTD.

Carl Alan Floral Designs

Carolina Pad

Chic Gems

dressy.com

Elegant Events

Excel Physical Therapy and Fitness

It’s in the Stars

Kaleidoscope Solutions

Larmon Studios

Marriott Philadelphia West

Philadelphia Marriott Downtown

Pictures by Todd,

Priscilla of Boston

Proud to Plan

Queen of Hearts Weddings

Ritz-Carlton, Philadelphia

Sabrina Ann

Sagets Formal Wear

Salon Vanity by Edmondo Blando

Silver Image Photography

Spell it Out

Stella & Dot

But what about the more serious, and sometimes violent, effects of the immediate connectivity of social networking? 140 characters or a viral Facebook invitation allows for little information and organization, but  excitement translates very well.

Recently, a couple of blocks from the Maven offices, a ‘flash mob‘ (which isn’t as risque as it sounds) assembled in The Gallery, a small Center City mall. The group of 150 high school aged kids didn’t dance or pillow fight, which would have been adorable. They instead ended up ransacking Macy’s department store and running ammuck. Supposedly the mob was organized in the spirit of the massive snowball fight that also occurred. But in true Philly fashion, the friendly fire turned into a wildfire.

Like any new technology or fad, it can be used for good or evil, mostly depending on the intentions of its participants. With so many on social networks and its potential growth, I just hope no one take it too far and ruins it for the rest of us, especially when my commute and day could be unexpectedly brightened by a dancing flash mob! I am also eagerly awaiting day when a criminal’s defense is “twitter made me do it.”

How then do you attempt a viral campaign with chance of success?  Is there a formula to follow?  Dan Goodswen proves that there is definitely precedent to follow.  For the film industry specifically, there are aspects of certain campaigns that seem successful.  For films, it seems that if the viewer is questioning if something is true or not “the buzz” increases.  Call us conspiracy theorists, but examples like Blair Witch Project, Fight Club, and the Dark Knight fit the mold. Toeing the line with the ‘is it real?’ question creates hype.  Thinking outside the box is not necessarily better.  The Da Vinci Code tried games and puzzles on the internet, a campaign deemed too ambitious to be successful.

Now, viral videos are less underground.  We wake up to infectious and creative videos featured on the Today Show, videos are forwarded to our inboxes, and websites like Digg and Stumbleupon tell us what people everywhere are looking at.  What is so great, is that if your campaign is good, there are people tweeting until they are blue in the face fingers, and people will hear about it.

It is easy to connect youtube videos with viral campaigns but what else is out there?  Hershey’s used sponsored house parties, luring nearly 150,000 guests.  HBO series True Blood created fake beverage ads and a vampire-human dating site, causing viewership to grow 66% over the course of the first season. (Source:  http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/135/spread-the-word.html)

These numbers are impressive, no doubt.  Back to deciphering a formula, the answer for one constant success story is still at large.  The only consistency appears to be that any successful viral marketing campaign needs to ‘go big or go home’ in this pass/fail grading system.