2011 Platinum PR Awards: Word of Mouth/Viral

Winner: The Hershey Company – S’mores Snacktivity Suite

The Hershey Company, with the help of JSH&A, sought to position s’mores as being more than just a campfire treat. Hershey partnered with the 2010 BlogHer conference (held August 5-7) to generate word-of-mouth via an experiential PR campaign. The centerpiece was a hotel suite transformed into a “s’mores home”—complete with a living room, a kitchen and even a backyard “patio.” The suite hosted one-on-one meetings with Hershey reps and bloggers that drove the “everyday” purchase message.

To create awareness for the suite, Hershey sponsored a “Dinner’s On Us” event prior to the conference for 100 top mom bloggers. In addition, the company provided 29 Washington, D.C. mom bloggers their train trip to the conference that included tweets and blog posts taking place during the trip. Even more, suite attendees were given the chance to win a grand prize that included a backyard fire pit by entering a raffle using their business cards. The campaign resulted in 2 million media impressions and top BlogHer influentials stating that they found the experience more meaningful than just being given “freebies.” —SP

Fast Fact: One in every four BlogHer attendees visited the suite and generated 380 tweets and 170 blog posts.


Honorable Mentions:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention – Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse: Adding “Zombie humor” to what is typically a sober message of preparedness, the CDC blog post received over 2 million hits within a week (when most CDC blog posts average 3,000 views a month) and trended on Twitter.

CooperKatz & Company Inc. – Help Petfinder Adopt the Internet Day: CooperKatz encouraged top media sites, pet bloggers and online pet lovers to help Petfinder “adopt the Internet” by posting photos of Petfinder pets and displaying the Petfinder “Adopt the Internet Day” badge on their Web sites. Beginning on March 15, the campaign secured 352 placements on the Web that created almost 190 million media impressions.

Nikon – Nikon Film Festival Social Campaign Championing D-SLR Video: Nikon developed a social media-based film festival to link its HD video cameras to the surge in user-generated content. Nikon recruited celebs such as Ashton Kutcher and Rainn Wilson to promote submissions to the festival. The campaign resulted in 2,200+ submissions and over 500,000 visits to NikonFestival.com.


Back to the 2011 Platinum PR Awards

September 14, 2011