by Tyra Haag
@tyratuckerhaag

Awards programs provide a great way for a company like ours to develop its own market reputation while also putting forth our work for peer review in a competitive setting. The whole process is an excellent learning experience and a way to stay toe-to-toe with best practices.

Last month, our team walked away from the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) Volunteer Chapter awards with 12 Award of Excellence honors, including “Best in Show” – a first for the agency – for the 2010 Dandy Lions Holiday Media Relations Campaign.

Since that evening, I’m often asked, “So, how do you win ‘Best in Show’ anyway?” Several factors were involved, but the following summary offers a glimpse into the “who, what, where, when and why” of the campaign.

In 2006, Blount County native and “mom-trepreneur” Joy Forster Carver opened Dandy Lions, a unique gift and stationery boutique in the heart of downtown Maryville, Tenn.  Dandy Lions carries baby, wedding, graduation and holiday gifts, along with home décor and a variety of distinctive items for special occasions, including an extensive selection of local and regional stationery.

In late summer 2010, Carver enlisted the services of Mary Beth West Consulting (MBWC) to build her base of customers locally and promote her boutique on a more prominent level, specifically during the 2010 holiday season.  The goal: to increase holiday-related sales from the previous year. Carver desired to become the area’s go-to “guru” for gifts and stationery needs. 

Because this initial campaign needed to focus on awareness-building for the Dandy Lions brand in the local media market, MBWC created a list of media contacts and publications that would benefit from Carver’s expertise.

In addition to researching media contacts and holiday gift guide criteria, MBWC researched the publications’ editorial calendars to see which special sections would be a good fit to highlight various aspects of what the store and Carver herself had to offer in gift-giving trends, product ideas and party-planning tips.

The research allowed MBWC to suggest and actively pursue special sections, including regional and statewide holiday gift guides for Dandy Lions to be featured.

The local campaign was planned to emphasize Carver’s event-planning, party hosting and gift etiquette expertise while the statewide campaign emphasized some of the actual holiday product purchases available at Dandy Lions.

Due to the successful targeted media outreach strategies, MBWC was able to secure four columns placed in the Sunday section of local paper The Daily Times; four holiday gift guide features in local and statewide glossy magazines (At Home Tennessee November and December issues, Knoxville Magazine and Cityview), one feature in The Knoxville News Sentinel, two mentions in Blount Today; and one television feature on the local NBC affiliate, WBIR-TV – the area’s number-one ranked news station.

According to published circulation rates, more than 2.7 million impressions were generated by the local and statewide exposure. The goal of the media relations campaign and targeted outreach was to promote Dandy Lions on a more prominent local and statewide level during the holidays. By the end of 2010, Carver had more than doubled her sales from the previous year.  

MBWC thoroughly enjoyed working with Carver to promote her extraordinary boutique. What an honor it was for our contemporaries to recognize us for those efforts with the J. Carroll Bateman “Best in Show” award.

A host of our colleagues also received Awards of Excellence, Quality and Merit for their outstanding work in 2010. For more details about the 2011 PRSA V Awards, please visit:  http://volunteerprsa.org/content.php?page=Awards_of_Excellence.

Already, we are poised to enter strong work again for the 2012 awards program, given the results we’re generating for clients in the utility, education, travel / tourism and retail sectors, to name a few, so stay tuned!

On a final note, Dandy Lions recently unveiled a fantastic new website . Be sure to stop by the next time you’re in Maryville.