Did Ann Summers miss a PR trick in The Year of the Rabbit?
So we are celebrating the Chinese Year of the Rabbit! However is the fluffy rabbit/pest pictured above what you first think of? Or has the ear-twitching oscillating antics of the Rampant Rabbit meant you have altogether different thoughts? It got me thinking that lingerie giant Ann Summer has perhaps missed a marketing trick? Surely at Ann Summers they celebrate the Year of the Rabbit every year? Instead a trick has been missed and fleetingly squandered on social media.
A best selling product range at Ann Summers the various incarnations of the adult toy are prominently displayed on the lingerie firm's website and presumably remain a key source of the company's continued growth under the leadership of Jacqueline Gold. So a well timed campaign to coincide with the high profile given to the Chinese horoscope celebrations would have seen a few more rabbits hope off the shelves.
Instead, Ann Summers has been hitting the headlines with less tasteful stories surrounding the whole poisoning affair that saw a nanny employed by Jacqueline Gold poison her boss in some bizarre feud with the family chef. Screenwash seemed to be the ingredient of choice which (if you excuse the pun) certainly had the Daily Mail frothing at the mouth! Indeed the nanny, Allison Cox faces jail for her malicious food tampering.
Anyway, back to Rampant Rabbits at Ann Summers, a good humoured campaign would have boosted sales and could easily have linked to Valentine's Day (a quick and thoroughly unscientific poll reveals that non fluffy rabbits are an appropriate gift will be more warmly received by flowers or anything red and scratchy!). Surely sales would have soared? They have no less than 13 different variations of the Rampant Rabbit online!
To be fair, a single update at Ann Summers on Facebook did make the connection and of over 160,000 fans who would have seen it, 350 'liked' the update and it attracted 103 comments. However of those 103 many are people having a conversation - which is great! However none of the comments attracted a 'Like' or a reply comment from Ann Summers itself though - which is a failure to engage and suggests they see Facebook as a broadcast tool, rather than as a social media channel to engage with people. Indeed going back a few weeks they have published stacks of lovely content, but not engaged once. Imagine if they had offered to give away a rabbit to the most 'liked' comment? I suspect that would have gone viral!
Meanwhile @Ann_Summers on Twitter used the same update at the same time and it gained only a two retweets from almost 4,000 followers (even @AnnSummersPR didn't retweet it!) In terms of good practice on Twitter, the team are responding to questions and complaints, which is excellent.
As a public relations and social media consultancy in Berkshire, here at Morgan PR we know the importance of making the most from PR opportunities and events in the calendar are often a straightforward way to hop on the passing bandwagon and secure some coverage. The more legitimate the link the more chance you have in succeeding and promoting rabbits in the Year of the Rabbit is as slam dunk certain as it gets whether you sell Rampant Rabbits under plain cover or real life rabbits at a local pet store. Has a local carpenter seen demand soar for his rabbit hutches? You get the idea!
We work with a host of businesses in Berkshire and neighbouring Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Hampshire to create PR strategies and most are actually now Public Relations and Social Media Strategies that dovetail with business plans and marketing strategies to help our clients achieve their goals through PR and social media. Crucially part of this includes close scrutiny of the calendar related opportunies that will naturally occur. Add your own calendar to the mix and the chances are multiple opportunities present themselves that you could effectively leverage to get people talking about your business - and getting people talking, getting them telling stories about you - that is what PR is all about.
Incidentally Jacqueline Gold has just ventured on to Twitter herself and looks set to be one of those business executives who actually tweets themselves, so worth a follow - @Jacqueline_Gold will take you to the lingerie entrepreneur's twitter feed.
Do you think Ann Summers missed a trick? Or have you a great example of PR that has effectively exploited a calendar event? Tell us in the comments.