As the brand manager for all of Easton Porter Group's east coast luxury properties, I had the opportunity to re-think and optimize their earned media content strategies. Here's a quick overview of my impact on the digital presence of one of my favorite brands, a winery in Charlottesville, VA called Pippin Hill Farm.
CONTENT STRATEGY
Bringing the physical to life on digital channels
Pippin Hill is easily the most beautiful place I've ever been. Every detail, from the curtains that hang in the wedding hall, to the candles that flicker on tables in the tasting room has been carefully curated by the venue's owner, and world-renowned event planner Lynn Easton. Every aspect of the physical experience had been carefully considered, then re-worked an considered again. My job was to make sure that the same level of care came to life digitally.
While at Easton Porter Group, I re-worked their content strategy by spearheading a number of campaigns to bring their flawless physical experiences to life in a digital sphere. Here's a quick and dirty overview of a few of my favorite campaigns.
Pippin Pups
It doesn't take a genius to realize that people on the internet like puppies. I realized pretty early on that re-posts of winery guests' photos with their pups performed well, and my team created a whole content campaign surrounding these furry friends. The goal? To let customers know dogs are welcome at the winery, and to bring this luxury venue a personality with a little down-to-earth fun. I started by promoting the hashtag on Instagram with a weekly call for winery guests to share photos of their pup for the chance to be reposted. We added depth to the concept by sharing fun content on our blog. The campaign culminated in a spin on the traditional influencer meet up. We invited dogstagrammers from all parts of Virginia to the ultimate puppy play date. Aside from being adorably insta-worthy, this meet-up resulted hitting some key growth milestones for the brand. We found at least 1,000 new followers from all corners of the great state of Virginia, we began an ongoing partnership with Virginia Tourism Corporation to continue to create buzz-worthy events that drive VA tourism, and the cherry on top was executing a successful fundraiser to support our local SPCA chapter.
Winter Weddings
During my second year with the company, the sales team fell behind their goals for wedding sales. I was tasked with helping them discover digital marketing touchpoints that could help them get back on track. Strategically, winter weddings left the most room for the sales team to grow. Historically, fall, spring, and summer dates were easy to sell, but winter dates proved to be much more difficult. I began by helping equip the sales team with the right tools, and together we created a beautiful winter wedding brochure to send to clients who were in love with Pippin Hill, but whose budget fell just short of the high-season minimums. Once the tools were polished, the next step was to make winter weddings at Pippin Hill seem just as cozy and magical as they truly are. Instagram and Pinterest are the two single-most used social platforms for discovering wedding inspiration, so naturally, these channels were at the forefront of our marketing focus for selling winter weddings. In addition to a Pinterest board fully devoted to showcasing the best photography from winter weddings at Pippin Hill, we ramped up Instagram coverage to showcase our winter offerings, including full-day Insta-story coverage of our most beautiful winter wedding experiences. The results of this campaign (coupled with an amazing sales team) included not just getting back on track for wedding sales the following year, but selling an all-time record amount of winter weddings.
Where's Claire?
Brand Strategy • Digital Strategy • Content Strategy • Creative Execution • Team Management • Partnership Strategy • Sales Strategy