Unless you have freakishly long ear hair or you can pluck a turkey in 90 seconds, there aren’t many opportunities for the average person to be a part of a Guinness World Record. Until now.

To help the Pennsylvania Winery Association (PWA) attract some attention for one of the best kept secrets in the northeast United States (Pennsylvania’s 130-plus wineries), Pavone has helped organize the Great Pennsylvania Wine Toast. The goal of the event, being held on Saturday, August 14 at more than 60 wineries throughout the Commonwealth, is to set a Guinness World Record for the largest wine tasting ever conducted – and to promote Pennsylvania wineries as fun and exciting places to visit, of course.

We even recruited lifelong Pennsylvanian, wine lover and racing legend, Mario Andretti, to serve as the event’s celebrity “toastmaster.” Mario will recite a toast (chosen from hundreds of su bmissions in our Write the Ultimate Toast Contest), which will be broadcast via video to all locations at precisely 4:15 p.m. on August 14. In exchange for his efforts, a portion of the money raised at each winery will be donated to Mario’s charity-of-choice, The Fund to Benefit Children & Youth.

So if tasting wine and being a part of history sounds appealing to you, I invite you to set aside an hour or two to join the PWA in celebrating the Pennsylvania wine industry and supporting a great cause. Feel free to visit the PWA website to find a participating winery near you.

And if you can’t make it out to a winery on that day, at least pay a visit to a winery in the near future. You won’t break any records, but the chance to taste a half dozen or so wines and chat with the people who made them is an experience even the world’s oldest woman would appreciate.

Cheers,
MP

P.S. – If you’d like to raise a glass on August 14, but can’t do so at a winery, you can visit the PWA website at 4:15 p.m. (or any time thereafter) to view Mario’s toast.

A few months ago, I talked about product placement on television programming, the positive effect of “earned media” on ROI, and how TV is still king when it comes to PR and building your brand.

Landing high-profile television exposure for our clients is nothing new around here. We’ve had placements on Food Network Unwrapped for Turkey Hill Dairy, the Rachael Ray Show for Utz, and a segment on the History Channel’s Modern Marvels for Excel Homes.

Fast forward to early July, when the Pavone team was thrilled to learn that Excel Homes, the nation’s largest manufacturer of custom modular homes, had been selected as the builder for an episode of the ABC hit Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. The popular show builds a new home from the ground up –in one week.

In the past year, Excel, like others in the industry, found themselves in the middle of a declining housing market. Combine that with the misperception that “modular” equals “double-wide.” Can you say challenges?

We said opportunity. And what better platform to boost a brand and change minds than a show seen by millions?

Our task was to stay a step ahead of fast and furious requests from production while not losing sight of the client’s mission. I’d call what followed an exercise in total client promotion. The Pavone team went full-steam into doing everything that was needed in a short period of time: build a microsite, design and create all types of swag, develop interactive tools to coordinate scores of VIPs and volunteers, create a PR campaign, work with multiple vendors, partners and donors, and plan and execute multiple events separate from the build – all in a matter of weeks. Our project theme was “Together We Excel.

The results speak for themselves. While on the build site, Excel’s logo was front-and-center in every camera shot. Microsite and blog entries were constantly updated with new info and photos. Last-minute press conferences, PSAs, off-site shoots, crisis communication (thanks to weather delays caused by record amounts of rain), and on-site publicity resulted in tons of coverage. To date, we’ve had almost 60 million impressions valued at $3.9 million in earned media, and the show doesn’t even air until this fall.

The young ladies of Boys Hope Girls Hope, an organization that helps academically capable and motivated youth reach their potential, now have a home they can call their own, and we have a happy client. When the shooting wrapped, Excel executives said, “We’ve changed people’s minds about modular building. We learned a lot about ‘live’ television. We’ve changed people’s lives. And we’d do it all again.”

And so would we.

Cheers,
mp

In April, I shared with you some details about a campaign Pavone worked on for Harrisburg International Airport (HIA). Not surprisingly, the campaign worked, but how well it worked is something both the client and agency are flying high about.

To recap, HIA wanted to announce its new non-stop flight service to Chicago while also promoting the advantages of flying via HIA versus Philly. In response, we partnered with a local radio station to create a one-day, two-contestant race to Chicago and back (one departing from Philly and the other from HIA), and surrounded the promo with public relations, paid advertising and a slew of web-based outreach.

Fast forward a few months to the present day. Travel figures are in and May 2010, as it turns out, saw HIA’s highest level of passenger traffic in nearly five years, a span of time that includes plenty of good years before the recession put a damper on many American’s travel plans. More than 119,000 passengers arrived and departed from central Pennsylvania’s busiest airport in May, representing a 10.5 percent increase over May 2009. Traffic is also up 2.3 percent so far this year, compared to the same period in 2009.

It’s also important to fill each flight as full as possible – a make-it-or-break-it budgetary stat known as “load factor.” During the first month of the new American Airlines Chicago service, flights from HIA were at a load factor of 90 percent, well above the 78 to 82 percent industry standard, and more than enough to take some of the sting out of the 20 percent increase in jet fuel costs in 2010.

While the Pavone team can’t take all of the credit for the surge in travel at HIA (the HIA team and a rebounding economy also helped), we like to think our campaign played at least some role in influencing central Pennsylvanian’s travel plans. That and the deep dish pizza we gave away throughout the campaign. A slice of Giordano’s pepperoni and sausage is worth a round trip ticket to the Windy City by itself.

Cause marketing has grown in recent years from pink yogurt lids to red laptops. And for good reason, it works. A recent Cone Corporate Citizenship Study reports that 90% of Americans would switch to a new brand if it was associated with a good cause. And research featured in the MIT Sloan Management Review indicates that cause marketing can deliver better returns on investment that other affinity marketing programs including sports or entertainment.

A good success story is eBay Giving Works. In 2003 this cause campaign was developed in response to demand from eBay sellers who wanted to support charitable organizations through their sales. Sellers select their favorite charity from a list of nonprofits and designate a percentage of proceeds. eBay provides a Giving Works icon and blue and yellow ribbon that appears in the title bar of the listing. The results? Giving Works works. On average, items that support a charitable organization have 20% more bids and sell at a higher price than those that don’t.

The research study in the MIT Sloan Management Review was based on a series of four experiments in the U.S. and in Mexico with beer and milk brands. In all four experiments there was significant consumer preference for the same brand when associated with a social cause versus a commercial entertainment entity. For example, consumer preference for a U.S. Beer brand was significantly higher when associated with a children’s reading program versus an amusement park.

Are you missing out on the potential bottom-line benefits of cause marketing? Cause marketing may give a brand the edge it needs to win the hearts and minds of consumers in today’s cluttered marketplace.