Goals:
- Raise profile of Maine Maple Weekend
- Sell more Maine Maple Producers Association products
- Gain publicity and promote Maine maple producers and their local products
- Increase web traffic
Situation Analysis:
Marshall Communications (MC) was tasked with promoting Maine Maple Producers Weekend, held in October, as the pandemic had forced the cancellation of the originally scheduled Maine Maple Sunday event back in March. This annual weekend event is when Maine’s maple producers sell the bulk of their products so promoting the event was paramount in the success of the Association’s members. MC needed to earn extensive media coverage as people in Maine were not expecting a fall event to celebrate maple syrup.
Methods:
- Distributed gift/video assets to various media outlets to include in their promotions of Maine Maple Sunday
- Created an online Maine Maple Recipe Contest to generate publicity during the pandemic (when a lot of people were cooking and baking at home).
- Shared assets with members for promotion on their social media channels
- Created Facebook event and invited members to use that event as their “home base” to direct people to for all information pertaining to Maine Maple Sunday
- Developed key media list of Maine-based, regional, national and international outlets
- Pitched story ideas to media outlets
- Identified and pitched profile features on pre-selected members
- Invited local and regional media to the Maine Maple Sunday event
- Pitched to local Maine TV morning shows for cooking segments with Maine maple products
- Created fact sheet for TV and radio interviews with key talking points for on-air guest
- Wrote two op-eds related to topics
- Sent samples of small gift packs of different syrup grades to top-tier national media/influencers and invite them to share their favorite on their social media channels
- Created a Facebook advertising plan, including management and creation of up to 6 Facebook ads; the plan and ads will be based on the goals and objectives of the MMPA
- Daily monitoring of the Facebook page
- Purchased Facebook ads through Facebook
Results:
Pageviews to www.MaineMapleProducers.com increased dramatically over Maine Maple Producers Weekend (October 8-12), with over 22,000 pageviews and of the 7,172 website visitors, over 7,000 were new users.
Media coverage was extensive in the weeks ahead of the event and over the weekend of the event itself.
WGME 207 news program featured a recipe for a Maine maple cocktail that MC created and pitched.
August 26, 2020: https://www.mainebiz.biz/article/maine-maple-producers-to-host-october-weekend-to-make-up-for-lost-season
August 29, 2020: https://www.centralmaine.com/2020/08/29/maine-maple-producers-weekend-set-for-october/
September 28, 2020: https://wgme.com/features/good-day-maine/maine-maple-producers-weekend-kicks-off-october-9
September 30, 2020: https://www.sunjournal.com/2020/09/30/plans-for-maine-maple-producers-weekend-include-recipe-contest/
October 8, 2020: https://92moose.fm/maine-maple-weekend-is-october-9th-through-11th/
October 11, 2020: https://www.sunjournal.com/2020/10/11/maine-maple-weekend-reunites-producers-customers-in-october/
October 11, 2020: https://www.wabi.tv/2020/10/11/maine-maple-producers-weekend-takes-place-of-postponed-maine-maple-sunday/
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