Cigar makers sees the light with social media product launch
The New York Times presented an interesting social media case study earlier this week on the launch of a new cigar brand by the EPC Cigar Company that once again pushes the debate: if you’re budget is tight, would it be better to invest in a social media strategy over traditional marketing for a new product launch?
Here are the telling details:
- The company had $300,000 to spend.
- The options came down to targeted print, cable TV and radio ad buys and at taxi-stands in New York City. (There goes the whole budget there, I’d imagine.)
OR…
social media options included three Web site concepts: one involved a collage on the company Web site of live, online mentions of the company and Ernesto Perez-Carrillo Jr.; a second featured a world map (from Google Maps) on the Web site that showed the origin of real-time Twitter messages about cigars; and a third would use a Facebook page as the company’s main online presence. In any case, the digital strategy would involve the use of Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.
The company went with what’s behind Curtain 2: emphasizing the social media marketing campaign. (It still had plenty of money left over to do some traditional ad buys and trade show marketing.)
Already, the company reports an impressive return on the social media campaign. By utilizing Twitter and a programmed Google Maps layout it can point interested customers to places that sell the cigars; an iPhone app is coming soon. The EPC Facebook page and YouTube channel go more in-depth about what goes into each cigar and how to tell a good stogie from a phony, emphasizing the brand’s authority here.
The upshot? EPC has over 700 Facebook fans now and over 200 Twitter followers (a nice spike ensued, of course, after the NYT article). The CEO is also now projecting sales of $1.5 million this year.
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Social Media Influence: Social Media News & Intellegence » Cigar … http://bit.ly/9sLgsy
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Social Media Influence: Social Media News & Intellegence » Cigar …: Social Media Events · Jobs · About · SMI Edi… http://bit.ly/dd8PkR
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Social Media Influence: Social Media News & Intellegence » Cigar …: The company went with what’s behind Curtain … http://bit.ly/cRkoyt
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Social Media Influence: Social Media News & Intellegence » Cigar … http://bit.ly/btBHzp #I12SM
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Cigars and social media – an interesting combination: http://ow.ly/1bKZh
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