The Challenge
In April 2004, AuctionDrop, the first company providing a simple, fast and convenient way for consumers to drop off goods for sale on eBay, turned to Tier One Partners for help with promoting the national expansion of its company. Recognizing the enormous potential to expand the company's reach beyond its five Northern California locations, AuctionDrop had just cemented a relationship with UPS, under which the more than 3,500 The UPS Store locations in the U.S. would begin serving as AuctionDrop drop-off locations. With the flick of a switch, AuctionDrop was going national overnight—and in a big way.
Tier One Partners was chartered with designing and implementing an aggressive print and broadcast media relations campaign to formally announce AuctionDrop's agreement with UPS, build the AuctionDrop brand and, ultimately, inspire consumers across the U.S. to give AuctionDrop a try through their local The UPS Store. The PR challenge was to make the AuctionDrop story local news in cities across the U.S. and steal the thunder from the boutique and franchise players in each local market.
Here's how we accomplished our objectives:
Our Approach
Our strategies included the following:
Capitalize on a timely news hook to garner maximum media attention. We timed the announcement to coincide with the start of eBay Live, eBay's massive user conference, which is attended by 15,000 people and is widely covered by the media.
Differentiate AuctionDrop from local e-Bay drop-off service boutiques and franchise players.
Demonstrate the market need for eBay drop-off services like AuctionDrop. Additionally, we offered customer success stories to validate AuctionDrop's value proposition.
Leverage publications with the most influence and broadest reach to build momentum for AuctionDrop's story. We aggressively pursued and secured coverage with a top national business publication and wire service to ensure widespread pick-up of the story in local markets across the U.S. Following the announcement, we arranged a press tour in New York City to brief key editors at the major consumer men's and women's long-lead magazines about AuctionDrop.
Localize the story for print and broadcast reporters in the headquarter cities of AuctionDrop (Bay Area), UPS (Atlanta), and The UPS Store (San Diego) as well as for reporters in the top 20 U.S. markets.
Conducted a Satellite Media Tour with AuctionDrop's founder and CEO.
Coordinated a 14 magazine press tour with long-lead consumer magazines to take place the month following the announcement with Real Simple, Redbook, Marie Claire, Family Circle, Home, Woman's Day, Budget Living, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Men's Fitness, New York Post, Parents, Parenting and Self.
The Results
Our campaign secured more than 90 articles in print and radio outlets including
The Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, Newsweek, Atlanta Journal Constitution,
San Francisco Chronicle, The San Diego Union Tribune, The Washington Post, The Oakland Tribune and Reuters. Local print stories were secured in more than 70 local daily newspapers via our pitching and our placement of an Associated Press story, which was picked up off of the wires. AuctionDrop's broadcast campaign secured 70 television news features, reaching a broadcast audience of 5,308,738, including 16 interviews with AuctionDrop's founder and CEO through the Satellite Media Tour. Additionally, results from the long-lead press tour included briefs in Real Simple, Country Living and Home, among others.
