The Case
Last fall's frantic online shopping season, coupled with the new-millennium hype around Y2K, offered timely opportunities for a home furnishing etailer to create a national
buzz about its floor-to-ceiling product offerings. But to stand apart from the deafening Y2K buzz emanating from ecommerce companies, Homepoint.com had to leave the Information
Superhighway and drive on asphalt.
Offline Strategy
To urge people to take a closer look at its Web site, Homepoint.com hit the highway with an eye-popping 50-foot glass house on wheels, decorated and furnished with its
products.
The mobile home, which cost $500,000 to design and operate , toured 36 cities and showcased the company's ability to turn a house into a home. Construction of the monstermobile
was handled by a Champaign, Ill. contractor. The PR engine behind the tour, CooperKatz (CK), had one month (August) to develop a roadmap of special events that would build
momentum and generate grassroots awareness of Homepoint.com while driving heightened traffic to the company's site. CK was comfortable in the event planning driver's seat, having
organized Olympic events in the past.
CK overcame time-crunch barriers by assembling an event execution team adept at identifying high-profile gigs and negotiating last-minute city permits. Crowd-pleasers during
the four month tour ranged from online sweepstakes and contests to a Mardi Gras float and a Halloween séance. By the time the mobile home anchored itself in New Orleans for a New
Years Eve Mardi Gras-themed pajama bash, the tour had generated more than 30 million media impressions in such notable media spots as MSNBC, the New Orleans Fox affiliate and
UPN's "Real TV."
Passenger and Drivers
CK mapped out a 36-city tour that hit Miami, Boston, Seattle and San Diego before reaching its designated finish line in New Orleans. In each market the glass home became a
media spectacle due, in part, to the tongue-and-cheek appeal of Bunker Bob, the home's "millennium pioneer" whom CK cast as the tour's energetic spokesman. Bunker Bob's mission
was to visit as many American cities as he could to search for the perfect place to bunker down in the new millennium. (His ultimate choice was San Francisco.) Bob touted his own
jingle, produced by CK, which was used for radio promotions.
To promote the tour, CK relied on an event planning formula that allowed the agency to generate maximum media coverage -- particularly around holidays -- under tight time
constraints. A team of 18 staffers handled PR tasks in three core areas:
Route segment managers were sent to each market three to four weeks ahead of the mobile home's arrival to identify the best local promotional events and opportunities.
The publicity team pitched the local and national media on Bunker Bob's adventures and negotiated with news stations to do live remotes and broadcasts from the mobile home.
An on-site coordinator scheduled media interviews in each market.
Mileage and Milestones
For Halloween, Bunker Bob hooked up with a famous séance expert in St. Louis and hosted a séance inside his glass palace, attracting 125 people and local media interest.
Similarly, Bob's Thanksgiving dinner was prepared by nationally renowned gourmet chefs at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, in front of more than 2,000 onlookers and reporters.
For Christmas, an extravagant light show of 82-foot high snowmen accompanied the mobile home in four markets on the West Coast.
But New Year's Eve is where the tour pulled out all the stops. Bunker Bob officiated a wedding ceremony in New Orleans and followed it with a Mardi Gras-themed reception/pajama
party. The bride wore a Victoria's Secret negligée and the groom wore black silk pajamas. The local FOX affiliate provided live coverage of the event.
All in all, the tour generated coverage from 161 local TV stations, 60 radio stations and 70 print articles for a total of 30 million media impressions. Homepoint.com saw a
spike in its Web traffic during the campaign, logging thousands of digital visitors. By tracking email origins and the redemption of e-gift certificates, Homepoint.com determined
that 14% of all new site registrations were a result of Bunker Bob visitors.
(CooperKatz, Andy Cooper, Andrea Martone, 212/455-8016; Homepoint.com, Melissa Introne, 864/678-1462)
Online Fanfare
In addition to his appeal on the road, Bunker Bob attracted an online following.
He had his own Web site at http://www.bunkerbob.com
(part of the Homepoint.com site), which allowed visitors to email Bunker Bob,
track the tour via city-by-city journal entries and digital photos, purchase
tour merchandise and win e-gift certificates. Homepoint.com also ran an online
sweepstakes that challenged visitors to guess the tour's final destination to
win furnishings in the bunker. Another online contest required citizens in each
city to send Bunker Bob emails explaining why their city was the ideal city
to live in inY2K. Winners received e-gift certificates and were invited as guests
on local radio shows when the tour came to town. While these online incentives
drove steady traffic to the Homepoint.com site, they also provided effective
ways of tracking the tour's progress and reaching new audiences who might otherwise
balk at the idea of purchasing furniture online, says Melissa Introne, Homepoint.com's
senior manager of PR.
CooperKatz Driving Record
HQ: New York
Founded: 1996
Revenues: $1.5 million
Staff on Homepoint.com account: 18
Campaign Timeframe: Sept. - Dec. 1999
Budget: $1 million