by Karen Bruhn

Recently I met with a company’s newly hired marketing director. She was telling me that the previous week she had managed to get a new product press release out with little to no notice. She seemed proud and satisfied, but at the same time, knew as a marketing professional that she had also failed.

I sat in disbelief as she told me the story, and asked if she would be open to examples of what my firm had done for another company around their new product launch. She said yes, and I began to salivate. I returned to the office determined to make this woman see the light, while realizing that she needed us.

Perhaps it was my many years of working as a caterer to pay for graduate school, or the seed planted years ago by my business partner, but excellent marketing is exactly like pulling off the perfect Thanksgiving meal. It’s about anticipation, preparation, keeping excellent company, serving everything hot and finally letting the moments linger and take on a life of their own.

Let the analogies begin!

I sent her an example of one of many client campaigns we had developed, selecting a new software product release so she could see the similarities. At the end of the day, I wanted her to see that the process, not the tactics, is the same.

Six months prior to the new product release, we were asked to meet with the CEO and COO (fortunately the COO knew to bring us in this far in advance). We sat over dinner and for hours afterward discussing, “What’s the value? What does it change and how? What does this offer the end user for their companies? How does it increase their client’s value? What pain does it solve?” From there we parted and a plan was created. We were going to host a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner!

Back at the office we wrestled, we developed succinct messages and tossed them out for debate in an effort to find THE message. From there we could set the menu, also known as tactics. We knew we needed the perfect combination of flavors: PR, social, advertising, relationship marketing, and more. But equally important was controlling the ingredients each one uses in order for everything to work together. That’s why we controlled THE message.

As with Thanksgiving, the “official product launch” was set for the forth week of the month, which meant our pre-launch marketing campaign would need to start just over a month earlier.

We started by seeding their blog with the thoughts that lead up to the creation of the new product. In the months’ prior, through an aggressive PR, social media and speaking engagements, we had already established the CEO of the company as a thought leader in their industry. People wanted to know what he was thinking. This played well as we had him “think out loud.” A few weeks prior to the actual launch, we announced that we were going to change the industry: what had been the established norm since the ‘90s, was no longer the norm. We employed social marketing as well as relationship marketing directly from the CEO to clients, editors and key industry influencers to give them a sneak preview of the launch.

From there, we scheduled a webinar to showcase the new product. We sent rich embedded emails to every contact and potential client. Our social media and PR directors worked in tandem to reach out personally to editors and bloggers inviting them to attend the webinar. We tweeted, posted, blogged, then retreated, reposted, reblogged everything people were thinking.

At launch week: the press release went out announcing this new product offering and what it did. Editors were already well prepped to pick it up. Print ads that had been developed in the months prior were strategically placed in the client’s top-tier publications, synced with each publication’s editorial calendar. Animated banners announcing the new “era” were splashed about the online segment of the industry, many of which we had negotiated for free by our media buyer. Of course, the website prominently featured the new offering with a video that we also promoted via social media venues. Finally, a direct mail campaign was staged out to allow for individual, direct sales.

The industry was abuzz about what our client was doing. It appeared as though we were everywhere in someway. We were able to invite everyone in the house, tease and tempt him or her with the smells from the kitchen, long before the meal was served. By the time they were invited to sit down (in this case, to a webinar instead of the meal), we had already established that the meal was going to be delicious. Everyone “privileged enough” to be invited pinged as the dishes were reveled. We had them. And we had our captive audience, providing them with a forum for attention while seated at the table. In this case, social media was our table and we had gathered the audience. Again, we tweeted, posted, retweeted and reposted. And just as you hope to do with every Thanksgiving meal, we had changed their perception.

A smashing success, which begs the question: why can’t everyone do this? Through the use of strong visuals, consistent messaging, using each tactic’s unique media and delivery vehicle, we were able to create one singular idea and impression. It’s not rocket science. If we left it up the designers alone, it would be very beautiful (a great table) but lack the message. If we left it up to the writers (copywriters, PR and social) it wouldn’t be well rounded enough and thus not filling. If we left it up to the company to drive, the focus would have been on the meal and not the total experience of the guests. What we created was a sumptuous dinner that started with the invitation, and concluded with everything hitting the table at the same time, hot and delicious. We had built the momentum for their new product; it resonated for weeks, even months afterward in the imaginations of the guests.