In an effort to keep customers excited about the products in her “Just-in-Case” (the front of store cases where fresh products from cupcakes to cookies to minicakes are sold), Bethesda’s, Fancy Cakes by Leslie’s owner, Leslie Poyourow, is constantly looking for new product ideas. Brainstorming with sasse agency during a mid-February meeting, the “inspirational cupcake” was fashioned. Part-fortune cookie, all-cupcake, customers who purchase these inspirational cupcakes (of all flavors and designs) are treated to inspirational quotes and thoughts found inside the cupcake, not unlike a fortune cookie. With Leap Day approaching, sasse designed a “Spring into inspiration” campaign to launch the new cupcakes not only in the “Just-in-Case,” but also on Fancy Cakes by Leslie’s website (with a new blog) on Facebook and the hand selected social media forums best suited to the client (this is known strategically as the sasse media matrix, SMM). The campaign began with research. sasse provided Poyourow with a list of inspirational quotes that would fit on fortune-sized paper strips to be inserted into each cupcake. Examples include:
Families are like fudge – mostly sweet with a few nuts (Author Unknown)
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much (Helen Keller)
Leap, and the net will appear (John Burroughs)
No dreamer is ever too small; no dream is ever too big (Unknown)
Don’t blend in. Stand out (Unknown)
Act the way you’d like to be and soon you’ll be the way you act (Dr. George Crane)
Poyourow and her staff designed cupcakes to match with the inspirational quotes and the image-rich photos of these new cupcakes became the platform for Leslie’s new blog and the launch pad for her FB and social media campaign.
The following is an excerpt from Spring Into Inspiration (A Leap Year Blog) written by sasse agency writers for Fancy Cakes by Leslie:
Leap Year is an event not to be missed and it is a day to be inspired.
Why? Because it is an extra day, a bonus day, in our busy lives, an extra 24-hours to make up for time lost, friends or family missed, a day to get ahead, a day to treat ourselves. Because the average person only experiences about 20 Leap Day’s in a lifetime, Fancy Cakes by Leslie wants to make sure that we are inspired to do what we haven’t had time to do in a “Common (i.e. 365 day) Year.”
Inspired by quotes from the unknown to the wildly famous, I have been inspired on this Leap Year to “Leap Into Inspiration,” unveiling custom, inspirational cupcakes. Like a Chinese Fortune Cookie, these inspirational cupcakes come with “fortunes.”
The brainstorming meeting also launched a new custom-cupcake line: inspirational cupcakes for life- and corporate-events. This new product found a home in social media venues (such as Pinterest and FB) as well as on her blog:
I’m excited to make these custom inspirational cupcakes for events such as a baby shower, engagement party, mitzvah, 50th birthday celebration and the like. How fun it will be to throw a baby shower for a friend and serve cupcakes for dessert with “fortunes” that suggest what to name the baby…
Our timeline included the following strategy:
•How many postings on FB, Twitter and LinkedIn and other social media forums: sasse recommends at least five FB posts throughout the day (a new post every two to three hours with links to the blog as well as inspirational quotes and photos of cupcakes)
•Wording of the postings (e.g. inspirational quotes with name of speaker as well as a photo of a cupcake with an inspirational quote)
•Style of postings of Pinterest: An inspirational bulletin board will “host” the new line of cupcakes. We recommend at last five photos posted with captions two to three hours apart during the day.
•Postings about inspirational cupcakes on social media forums (how many forums, target market – e.g. moms, corporate, meditation): sasse recommends that the blog is posted on at least three social media/blog forums with more than 15K readers who are part of your target market.
Post campaign analytics from Google showed increased web visits and Facebook analytics showed not only increased “likes” but also increased FB activity. Of course, these upticks were backed up by what really mattered to the bakery owner: increased sales. The ROI from the Spring into inspiration campaign translated into bank at the bank.
Cari Shane
