Favorite Finds

2016 has been interesting from day one, and now we’re capping January off with updates to long-running stories that deal with a snowstorm, celebrities and some more controversy. Here are my top picks on stories from the past week!

• #WinterStormJonas – It was news last week, and just like the sheer mass of powder itself, the buzz stuck around. At least 48 people died in the storm, a quarter of a million customers lost power, and travel was sidelined into the early portion of the week. As if that wasn’t bad enough, D.C. isn’t taking it easy on bad parking jobs either. But there is one good bit of news from the storm – over 10 million Tinder matches were made. Let’s hear it for true love, people!
• Super Bowl 50 – The big milestone for the even bigger game is fast approaching. In anticipation, brands from Mini Cooper to Skittles have begun the process of unveiling their plans for advertising spots. And the biggest bets this year seem to be riding on pure celebrity power. Taking the pre-show spotlight include celeb partnerships like Liam Neeson for LG, Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen for Bud Light and Christopher Walken for Kia – in a spot entitled “The Walken Closet”. Genius.
• Standoff in Oregon – Since their seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge on January 2^nd, the Bundy Oregon militia have remained in the news. The Bundy family, long known for their protests with government over land rights, had their month-long protest interrupted on Wednesday after an incident with police that killed one militia member. Leader Ammon Bundy was among the seven members arrested, and is now encouraging the rest of the armed group to “please stand down.” Watch for news from this story to trend on into the future.
• #OscarsSoWhite – Nearly two weeks ago, the Academy Award nominees were announced. Since then, the all-white nominations have set off a wave of controversy – encouraging many celebrities, including Spike Lee, Jada Pinkett Smith and others, to boycott the ceremony. This week, the buzz didn’t settle down, as President Obama gave his thoughts on the diversity issue in Hollywood.
• Beef Twitter – What is Twitter really for? That’s a question that reached a peak this week when Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa entered into some vulgar form of public beef – the likes of which originated as a result of another buzzworthy moment – Ye changing the title of his upcoming album from So Help Me God to SWISH, and finally, to WAVES. Twitter has long been an “insiders platform,” but this was enough to unite all Twitter users in the name of sweet, juicy beef.  

Favorite Finds

Despite the low temperatures, there was plenty of news to keep the Twittersphere busy. Here are my favorite finds from this week: 

• Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. – Monday marked the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and his “I Have a Dream Speech” is considered one of the most change-provoking speeches in history. Take a page from Dr. King with these public speaking tips from PR Daily.
• Nielsen Moving Onto Facebook – In an effort to better understand the TV industry, Nielsen is moving beyond Twitter and into Facebook to see what TV shows fans are talking about to create “social content ratings,” and eventually will also incorporate Instagram into their ratings.
• Winter Storm Jonas – The threat of Winter Storm Jonas is prompting preparation and panic as the National Weather Service has said more than 60 million people could be affected, with some places expecting more than two feet of snow – including Washington D.C. and Baltimore – leading to state of emergencies and stocking up on bread and alcohol in preparation for binge-watching Netflix.
• Best time for social content – Maximize social content visibility on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and Twitter with the help of a great infographic from PR Daily on what time of day and in the week to post on each channel.
• Bad news for burritos – A lawsuit has been filed in California that claims Chipotle tried to cover up the norovirus outbreak last year which also has separately attracted the attention of the FBI. Chipotle has not provided any additional information, but they are closing all their stores on February 8 for an employee meeting to discuss new food safety protocols.

A Worldwide Search Ends in Barcelona

At LCWA, we’re willing to go the distance for our clients. And in my case, that means 4,391 miles!  I recently traveled to Barcelona, Spain, to assist Life Fitness in naming the top personal trainer for 2015 at the Personal Trainers to Watch final judging event. The trip was the pinnacle of months of prep work and coordination for the team. In addition to drafting press materials and coordinating media relations, LCWA also took on the role of event planners – coordinating logistics and managing relationships with the competition’s judges, staff and finalists, over five countries and seven different time zones! In the end, the team’s hard work paid off with record-breaking results. With the goal of positioning Life Fitness as the top equipment manufacturer for personal trainers, facilities and exercisers, LCWA helped generate more trade media impressions and lifestyle media placements than ever before in the competition’s history. Just as rewarding, we helped our client shine by executing a flawless event that will undoubtedly become a cherished life-long memory for its participants. Click here to check out videos and learn more about the event.

Helping Spread Holiday Cheer (And Cleaning Tips!)

Last month, the LCWA home products PR team helped to spread holiday cheer around the latest and greatest Electrolux cleaning tool – the Ergorapido Lithium Ion Brushroll Clean Xtra. With its stylish red paint job and powerful performance, what could be a better holiday helper? The #ErgoTheHolidays holiday program included a two-part Twitter campaign and blogger partnerships.

The campaign proved to be a success, with our Twitter sweepstakes sustaining user interaction over a two week period, and our Twitter party adding 1,600 tweets to the chatter! The blogger campaign also helped to share the cool features of the new Ergorapido and added more than 1 million impressions to the campaign. Overall, LCWA helped generate holiday buzz and nearly 10 million impressions for the Electrolux brand! That’s some festive conversation!

Didn’t get to use the new Ergorapido in your holiday home? It just so happens that it performs spectacularly on bare floors year-round. Find out more at: www.electroluxappliances.com  

Favorite Finds

It was a week of highs – like the highest jackpot in Powerball history – and lows, like beloved celebrities passing away unexpectedly. Here are just a few of the stories I found interesting this week:

• Keeping an Eye on Periscope - Livestreaming apps like Periscope have generated a large meditation community – bringing an old practice into the modern era. In other Periscope news, starting this week, livestreaming videos automatically play in newsfeeds in Twitter’s iPhone app – the first major tie-in between the platforms since the livestreaming app launched last year. Periscope also announced that it has amassed 100 million live broadcasts since March 2015.
• Gone Too Soon - With the unexpected deaths of high-profile celebrities David Bowie and Alan Rickman, both social and traditional media have been abuzz all week with tributes – some funny, some poignant and all wonderful.
• Unlucky Numbers - With the Powerball craze sweeping the nation thanks to the largest jackpot ever, a related meme began circulating on social media channels claiming that poverty would become nonexistent if the winnings were split evenly among all Americans. The problem? The math was way off. (Three winning tickets were drawn on Wednesday night, rendering poverty nonexistent to the lucky winners – for now at least!)
• News about News - The media world saw the shuttering of Al Jazeera America and an announcement that the century-old The New Republic is for sale.
• State of the Politics - We’re closing in on the Iowa Caucuses, and the election continues to dominate the news cycle. This week also saw President Obama give his last State of the Union address (with a large focus on Michelle’s dress) – and today he’ll be interviewed by three YouTube stars. The interviews also will be streamed on the White House’s YouTube Channel and on the White House website.

Promising Start to the New Year

If you Google “CES,” you’ll receive about 903,000,000 search returns. If that alone doesn’t astound you, think about how challenging it must be for brands to cut through the clutter of the Consumer Electronics Show to make their mark on key journalists covering the mega event.

Over the past several weeks, we helped one of our clients do just that – thanks first and foremost to a marquee brand doing wonderfully innovative things in the connected home space.

In concert with First Alert’s integrated marketing and communications team, we laid the groundwork early, launching a core Onelink by First Alert product and teasing other exciting, one-of-a-kind product introductions that did not disappoint come show time. Getting a healthy jump on outreach and having incredible assets – beautiful videos, diverse photography, and well-written and detailed press materials – helped to ensure our collective brand/agency team was a valuable resource to top-tier journalists covering the show.

Additionally, participating in key media-facing events like CES Unveiled and CES ShowStoppers ensured more quality time with media eager to cover unique facets of exhibitors’ wares. Thanks to these events and a strong presence at CES 2016, years of relationship building and highly skilled interviewees from First Alert helped to generate half a billion impressions in one week. That’s an astounding figure but so indicative of the level of innovation in the new Onelink by First Alert products. So far,  2016 is looking very promising!

Eureka Twitter Party Generates More than 12.6K Posts

LCWA built social buzz for the Eureka Brushroll Clean, the latest vacuum from LCWA client Eureka with a Twitter party for a key demographic for the vacuum – pet owners. The Eureka Brushroll Clean #PetCleaningUntangled Twitter party brought together Eureka, 14 bloggers and more than 600 participants to discuss cleaning methods and why the Brushroll Clean is the perfect cleaning tool for pet owners.

After a week of LCWA-coordinated promotion, party participants published more than 12,600 tweets using #PetCleaningUntangled during the hour long party for an estimated 23.3 million Twitter impressions. Followers re-shared tweets from Eureka with key product messages more than 3,700 times.

For more information about LCWA’s social media capabilities and how we measure social media programs, please contact us.

Favorite Finds

Twitter dropped a crazy announcement, Bears legend Brian Urlacher looks crazy with hair and how crazy is it that Rey was omitted by Hasbro?!

• After Rey, the Star Wars’ heroine – a role model for young girls (and guys) everywhere – was left out of Star Wars Monopoly, people were not pleased.
• …and the Twitter crowd goes wild, as former Bear and famous bald person Brian Urlacher showed up with surgically enhanced hair. Cue the Seinfeld references!
• President Obama announced gun control measures and, as you may have guessed, people had various opinions about it!
• Say whaaaaaa? Twitter announced plans for a 10 THOUSAND character limit, up from 140! So we had to ask…

Trex Teams up With Schools in Recycling Competition

As the world’s number one composite decking brand, Trex goes beyond simply creating beautiful and environmentally responsible outdoor products. Trex also recycles plastic materials such as bags, newspaper sleeves and case overwraps that have been dropped off at commercial locations to turn into decking. In fact, a standard 16-foot Trex deck board contains recycled materials from approximately 2,250 plastic bags, making Trex one of the largest recyclers of plastic in the United States.

In addition to its commercial recycling programs, Trex hosts its annual Plastic Film Recycling Challenge where hundreds of schools across the nation compete against each other to recycle the most plastic film while learning about the importance of recycling. Trex asked us to help spread the word about the competition during the registration period.

Through targeted social media posts, forum posts on teacher and education-related sites and traditional media outreach, LCWA generated 31 placements, resulting in over 500,000 media impressions. Additionally, our efforts drove 84% of clicks to the registration website, which resulted in several new schools signing up to participate in the challenge. During the last challenge, participating schools recycled more than 167,000 pounds of plastic film, and we’re hoping Trex will surpass that total this year!