A while back, I announced plans to start trying to implement the Mayflower Model for blog product placement here at ABDPBT. My original plan was to somehow target the placements around the trip to BlogHer that I’ll be taking in July, but as it turns out we have a more pressing opportunity for product placement and that is Mini’s forthcoming third birthday party in April. Now some of you might be thinking, “Eh, a kids party. Big deal.” But what I’m talking about is bigger than that, because I tend to kind of over commit myself when it comes to Mini’s parties. So what we decided was, we’d pitch a placement to a couple of different places for things we plan to get or services we plan to use for Mini’s party anyway, and see what happens. This would have been a lot easier if I had finished my media kit before trying this, but in case you haven’t started yours yet, you should know that media kits take a buttload of time to prepare. So do yourself a favor by starting yours much earlier than a few weeks before the event you’re trying to pitch.
Some Success!
We had already put the Treehouse Social Club in Beverly Hills on our list of possible locales for Mini’s party. The Treehouse is an establishment we’ve frequented many times with Mini and thought would make a great place for a kids’ party. The Treehouse Social Club is kind of a restaurant and kind of a kids play facility put together. Basically, you take your kid there and let them play in the giant treehouse in the middle of the place, and you can order food and coffee, or whatever, while they play. I’ve actually written about the Treehouse before on ABDPBT (sans compensation), so it’s kind of a natural fit for that part of the blog, especially given the fact that I’d definitely be writing about Mini’s birthday party on ABDPBT.
I wish I could say that I have gained a lot of experience in pitching from this exercise, but in this case I let Mr. Right-Click do all of the heavy lifting. I know this is bad, but Mr. Right-Click is really good at this kind of stuff. He called up the Treehouse people and told them about my site, gave them some salient points about traffic and influence, and then gave them an idea of what kind of exposure I’d give them. They hammered out details — including exactly how much they would give us and exactly how much we would give them in terms of placement. The short version is that we are getting a party and they are getting a placement with pictures to appear on the Monday following Mini’s birthday party, and all of this will be clearly marked as such in order to ensure complete transparency and adherence to FTC regulations. (By the way, we worked out this deal, but the post I’m writing right now is not sanctioned by them or compensated by them in any way.)
Mr. Right-Click told me that the Treehouse people were pleased with the blog and the idea of the placement, but that it was kind of a “hard sell” anyway, because of the economy and the fact that we didn’t have any previous placements to show them as models. I think that the more you do this kind of thing, the easier it would be, because you can show people what you have done before, but we’re all still learning so I’ll have to let you know on that front.
Some Failures
The only other potential sponsor we have approached so far is Sprinkles Cupcakes, which is, uh, a cupcake establishment also located in Beverly Hills. They were decidedly less interested, though they did listen to Mr. Right-Click’s pitch. I think, once again, having a media kit finished would have been a big help here, but I think the main problem was that Sprinkles gets quite a bit of placements in other media, and may not be terribly interested in futzing with a mommyblog. As Mr. Right-Click said, “Once you’re on Entourage, you don’t give a crap about mommyblogs.” (This led to a disagreement between me and Mr. Right-Click about whether or not Sprinkles had actually been on Entourage — I say, no, though I do think they’ve been on various different shows, just not that one. Mr. Right-Click maintains that they have been on Entourage, but it doesn’t matter anyway, because they won’t be appearing on ABDPBT.) So, turns out Sprinkles is not really interested in being in the ABDPBT business, which is super weird because I am like their ideal customer. Oh well, you cannot win them all.
Moving Forward
So that’s how things stand on the product placement front for now. I think we may approach a few more sponsors before the party, but for now it looks like the main placement will be the Treehouse, and I’m hoping to have them walk away from the experience feeling like they got more than their money’s worth, so that it’s a good example for future endeavors. The challenge I face is balancing it with the needs of you guys, the readers, so that the whole thing doesn’t feel like you’re just being marketed to without value. There are a bunch of different interesting factors at work in this experiment and I’m actually kind of excited to see how it all plays out. Stay tuned.
In other news, the first featured blogger ad is up and running! Please check out CrashTestMommy’s ad in the sidebar, and visit her blog ASAP! Thanks to Jenny for being the first experimental guinea pig in our brave new monetizing world.
 |
"The Great ABDPBT Product Placement Experiment Update" was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT Personal Finance and was originally posted on March 31, 2010. Copyright ®2010 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.0. All other rights reserved. |