iomega Holiday Gift Guide Program
Objectives:
Kraves PR took on the task of securing articles for Iomega’s new consumer storage products in holiday gift suggestions stories in consumer media.
The agency’s key challenge was to obtain the interest of gift guide editors in Iomega’s new storage devices within a sea of sexy new gadgets and consumer electronics that were arriving on the journalists’ desks daily. Editor backlash was that storage devices were stale and boring and not the kind of cool and nifty technology gadgets that were typically included in these stories. It was up to the pitching talents of Kraves PR executives to hammer home to the press the importance of convenient, easy-to- use, large capacity computer storage due to consumers’ rapidly expanding libraries of digital photos, videos, music and data.
To ensure inclusion in the long lead publications gift guides Kraves PR arranged press tour meetings in New York over a two-day period to show the new storage devices firsthand to editors and reporters. Included in the product portfolio were Iomega’s Micro Mini(TM) Hard Drive, the Portable Hard Drive and the Mixx(TM) MP3 Digital Music Player.
After the press tour, KPR conducted aggressive follow-up with the editors they met with, as well as other editors at long lead publications that they didn’t get to meet with to place evaluation units of the various products. They rounded out their pitching with the same creative holiday pitch and insistent media relations to the short-lead publications, including newsweeklies and consumer weeklies, news wires and the top 25 market dailies.
Results:
The creativity of the agency’s holiday-themed written materials such as the email pitch letter and press release, combined with conducting the long-lead media tour, sending evaluation units and aggressively following up with all the media outlets throughout the four-month campaign led KPR to secure more than 50 media placements in outlets nationwide, exposing nearly 200 million consumers to favorable Iomega press coverage.
The campaign generated coverage in national consumer publications including Popular Science, Parade, CRN, PC Magazine, FHM, eGear, Laptop, Men’s Journal, Penthouse and many others. Coverage in major daily newspapers and wire services included The Washington Post, New York Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Knight-Ridder Syndicated News Service, Gannett News Service and others. In addition, the campaign generated many online hits including placements with PCMag.com, WaPo.com, PCWorld.com, Macworld.com, PopMech.com and other sites. Lastly, broadcast clips included CBS This Morning and Chicago’s WABC-TV.
Rather than partnering with a large, cumbersome agency, Iomega smartly enlisted the media experts at Kraves PR to generate coverage and high demands for its new fourth quarter released products as they conducted this holiday gift guide program.