COMPANY: JELD-WEN Inc.
AGENCY: CMD Agency
TIMEFRAME: Spring 2005
Nothing says reliable doors and windows quite like a dog that can smell epileptic seizures before they happen...right?
No, wait, this actually makes sense. "Many home owners are also pet owners, so this seemed like a real warm and fuzzy way to associate windows and doors with the idea of home,"
explains Lynne Butterworth, community-relations manager at JELD-WEN Inc., a Portland, Ore.-based manufacturer of doors and windows.
In its quest for publicity, JELD-WEN this year turned to the local CMD Agency. The PR professionals in turn decided that a "most-reliable-pet" essay contest would be
just the vehicle. The contest ran this spring, and prizes included a $5,000 cash award to an animal shelter that submitted the most heartrending story of pet tragedy, and a $5,000
designer pet house to an individual whose pet demonstrated the kind of reliability embodied in the JELD-WEN ideal.
At CMD, Managing Director Darcie Meihoff explains that the contest evolved as part of a larger effort to promote the manufacturer's recently implemented motto: Reliability for
Real Life. "This contest offered us a way to bring that brand promise to life in an unusual, unexpected, attention-getting way," she says. The program also took advantage of a
nice demographic overlap. Among JELD-WEN's target audience - homeowners - some 58% own at least one pet.
To drum up essay submissions, CMD pushed hard for media attention.
The PR team publicized the contest on the client's Web site. Press releases went out to the national media in all forms, reaching beyond the company's usual round of home
editors to encompass pet editors, features editors and others not usually in the JELD-WEN loop. A JELD-WEN spokesman also was interviewed on the syndicated show "Animal Radio,"
which boasts a 250,000-person listener base.
In particular, the PR team looked for media opportunities that might appeal to a predominantly female audience. "We know that women make a lot of the home decisions, and that
they are a driving force when it comes to purchasing brands for the home," Meihoff says.
CMD also piggybacked on other news events to help land coverage for the essay contest. National Pet Week, for instance, helped the PR execs win attention from a number of
editors. They played the local angle too, offering a Seattle TV station the opportunity to tour the luxury pet house prize, which was being built in that city.
The visual appeal of that custom pet house turned out to be a major asset in the quest for media notice. "It actually looked like a little home for a pet, with little working
windows and doors," Meihoff says. "It's just not the kind of thing you see every day."
Likewise, the Internet helped to spread the essay-contest word. News stories appeared on the National Home Builders Association Web site as well as on sites associated
with such publications as Dog & Kennel and Ferrets Unlimited. All had links back to the JELD-WEN site. "When it starts to happen on the Web, the word just kind
of spreads," Meihoff adds.
In pursuing these diverse media strategies, CMD's professionals dug deep, looking not just for the appropriate columnists and editors, but for personal angles to tie those
journalists to the story. In one case, the PR team wrote to a columnist as if the letter had been written by his own dog - a dog the columnist had often written about in his
column. In the letter, dog asked master to cover the contest and it even offered to put him in touch with the PR team.
In a more traditional vein, the PR pros played the "clout card." They piqued the interest of a the host of a pet-related radio show by offering an interview with ranking
executives from JELD-WEN, followed by an interview with one of the winners and a second interview with JELD-WEN.
Finally, the campaign included a flashy follow up. When sending out the news release detailing the essay-contest winners, the PR team added a color sticker to the top of each
package, next to the address label. Each color picture depicted one of the winners with a caption: "Find out why this young woman's dog was voted Most Reliable Pet."
That dog, by the way, belongs to Candice Hernandez, a 21-year-old college student in Oviedo, Fla. Chiper can warn Candice, who suffers from epilepsy, when she is about to have
a seizure, so that she can lie down or find a place to rest.
Meihoff could not have asked for more. "The media really liked the personal stories. More and more, they are looking for that heartfelt, personal touch," she says. "A dog that
helps her owner get through the day without having seizures is a very compelling story. And the visuals are great."
Contacts: Lynne Butterworth, 541.850.2606, [email protected]; Darcie Meihoff, 503.417.3213, [email protected]
Pet Pitch Techniques
How can you build buzz around a pet-centric story? CMD Agency used these tactics in support of client JELD-WEN and its most-reliable-pet contest:
- Architects created a 3D image of the grand prize, a $5,000 custom-built pet house. A color rendering of that image went out with all press releases.
- The agency used an outside electronic-distribution system, eROI, to distribute news releases. Using this system, images were embedded in the text along with a link to download
a high-resolution image. - Post-contest news releases went out emblazoned with color stickers depicting the winners along with intriguing captions like "Find out why this adorable English bulldog was
voted Most Reliable Pet."