Up in the Air: Social Media and the Launch of the PiperSport

How social media helped sell a $140K airplane

When Piper Aircraft decided to launch the PiperSport – its entry into the light sport aircraft (LSA) category – the company took a traditional approach. It planned to announce the new plane at the U.S. Sport Aviation Expo 2010 at Sebring, Florida, with demonstrations, a press conference, and press rides. But Piper Marketing Director Jackie Carlon also invested in an integrated social media campaign, commissioning Michael Kolowich and his video production firm DigiNovations. The campaign included a YouTube channel, a Facebook fan page, and a Twitter feed.

Michael Kolowich, DigiNovations president and executive producer (and a pilot himself), created and managed the campaign. With only one week to prepare, he assembled and coordinated the efforts of a virtual team of micro-bloggers that included Piper staff (on the ground at the expo) and my company, Janice Brown & Associates (in cyberspace).

Michael, in this article and video, tells exactly how and why the campaign worked.


The campaign reached out to pilots, flying enthusiasts, journalists and bloggers around the world – quickly extending the excitement far beyond Sebring and creating fans all over the world.

And generating demand for the plane. The first plane sold on site, the second day of the show. (The sale was, of course, immediately reported on Facebook and Twitter, with a picture of the lucky buyers.)

The campaign of course started with a phenomenal product. But it was successful because of several strategies:

Authenticity and empathy– the right tone and content dramatized the PiperSport experience for the online audience

Engaging multimedia content, created by informed people (Piper and its fans/followers)

Emphasis on interactive conversation instead of just publication

Tight integration of the three social media channels (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) and integration with the marketing goals and overall marketing campaign

Careful timing and pacing

Marketers can learn from this case study, even if they aren’t selling a $140K consumer product.

(And yes, you can buy a PiperSport over the Internet, using PayPal. Click here.)

The Marketing of Paula Poundstone

How an original comedian has built an enduring brand - and what we can learn from her

I’ve been a huge fan of comedian Paula Poundstone for 25 years. I love her product: wry, intelligent and reflective comedy about the absurdities of everyday life in America. I recently saw her perform in Western Massachusetts, and it was a thrill.

It was also a 100% marketing experience – something one thinks about when buying a book or clothing, or staying at a hotel, or eating at a restaurant, or buying a car, but not necessarily when buying a comedy performance.

But Ms. Poundstone “gets” marketing in a way that other entertainers – even those with bigger names and vastly bigger marketing budgets – don’t.

Over the years, she’s built an enduring brand and, lately, is using social media to create a very effective integrated marketing strategy. The Paula Poundstone brand just “pops” from social media, delivering a consistent experience across all media.

For example:

She has an active Twitter presence, with more than 20,000 followers. She tweets frequently, and apparently does it herself (either that, or she has a scarily competent social media marketing person). The tweets sound just like her, and they are hilarious.

She makes goofy short videos, which she posts on YouTube. (Check out her Thanksgiving video.) These videos are low on production quality, high on hilarity content – just like Ms. Poundstone, who famously performs on stage with only a three-legged stool, a Diet Pepsi and a microphone.

She is also on Facebook, where she has more than 9,000 fans. This site allows people to converse with her, see where she’s appearing and so on.

She integrates and repurposes her content across these three marketing platforms. Her web site is pretty basic and unapologetically under construction. Fans can subscribe to her email updates, so they know where and when she’s appearing. Fans can also order her CD here.

Ms. Poundstone adheres to what I consider the three important principles of effective contemporary brand marketing:

Know your brand
Live your brand
Share your brand

Know your brand: Understand your brand characteristics and what they mean to your customers – and understand the risk of precipitous changes. For her comedy “product,” Ms. Poundstone draws on her own complicated life: three kids, 13 cats, motherhood, a demanding job and crazy travel schedule, her frustration at getting older, and a bag of neuroses, including her famous inability to ever shut up. She also questions her own limitations and the absurdities of everyday life. In other words: she’s just like many of us, albeit with a bigger audience and much better improvisational skills. She’s politely querulous, unglamorous, relentlessly untrendy, and refreshingly honest.

She’s been doing this for years. It makes fans laugh, and her fans love her. She does update her brand – for example, she’s become a regular contributor to National Public Radio – but everything she does is consistent with her brand image (wit, intelligence, insightful social commentary).

Live your brand: Paula Poundstone offstage equals Paula Poundstone onstage. (This is not automatically true of all comedians.) After the show that I saw, she met with fans for a few hours. She autographed CDs and her book, posed for photos, insisted that her fans be in the pictures (“I don’t want to look like a dork”), and continued to entertain fans even as she spoke with each personally. In other words, her brand is consistent across all her distribution channels.

When a substance-abuse problem landed her in the news (and, briefly, in jail) about 10 years ago, she handled it in classic Poundstone fashion: with honesty, humility and earnestness. (Note to Tiger Woods.) That consistency helped her weather what could have been a real brand-damaging incident.

Share your brand: Ms. Poundstone shares her brand in order to sell it. She uses social media to keep her brand in fans’ lives, giving fans many different ways to consume her brand and stay connected with her. She invites fans into her life (through her tweets and videos, in particular) and she constantly provides value (lots of free samples of her comedy product) before asking for the sale. After the recent Western Massachusetts show, she met with anyone who wanted to meet with her, saying “you don’t have to buy my book or CD, come by even if you just want to say hello or take a picture.”

Product sampling (sharing) creates interest in her CDs and performances. (I bought the CD on site, then came home and ordered the book. And I am going to share her brand with a few people when I give them the CD for Christmas.)

Entertainers are doing some of the most exciting marketing around today by using the new rules of marketing and PR defined by David Meerman Scott – even as piracy and other trends disrupt their industry and the traditional ways they have made money. Marketers in other industries should pay attention and look for inspiration in what entertainers are doing.

Online Marketing Video: From Truth to “Truman Show"

I saw two pieces of video in the last few weeks that drew my attention.

The first: J&K’s Wedding Entrance Dance video, a homemade video that went viral on YouTube and helped answer the burning question: “How will YouTube make money?”

The second: the infamous Beer Summit, a video storyboarded (and probably scripted, she said cynically) by politicians and apparently shot by a pool news videographer.

I was drawn to these two pieces of online video for a couple of reasons.

As a consumer, I am increasingly being marketed to with documentary-style Internet video like this – as opposed to traditional television commercials. As a marketer, I am learning how to use this medium effectively for clients – and more importantly, how not to mis-use it.

Comparing these two pieces of video may seem like comparing apples with tiramisu, but they are both essentially marketing videos.

J&K wanted to market their love for each other and their special day to the world – or at least beyond the people who were in the church. (Or maybe I am naïve – perhaps they were plotting all along to become a YouTube monetization star.) The politicians wanted to market the idea that race relations – a huge problem in America that has everybody jumpy – can be solved if we just started talking to each other as individuals and not as symbols.

My understanding of their intentions aside, I picked up some good lessons from these two videos: what worked and what didn’t. Here are my observations as a marketer:

J&K: High engagement level can trump low production quality: I have watched this video at least five times when I could have been doing billable client work, and I don’t even know these people. J&K (and their friends) cared enough to invest some time in making something that other people would enjoy and that would be memorable – there was some serious rehearsal time involved here. They used humor gently and very well: although there was some really comical dancing and some people looked silly, it was endearing, laugh-with-you humor not laugh-at-you humor (compare with the man-bashing that passes for humor in your average TV commercial). The story was real and very human. This silly video was uplifting and it made me feel good. (And, yes, good enough to buy the song from Chris Brown.) My verdict: two thumbs up.

Politicians: Good production quality can’t overcome an awkward storyboard. Although there were some engaging moments – yes! politicians get peanut shells on their trousers too! – I felt distant, disengaged and distrustful. It didn’t help that the video was shot from 50+ feet away, making it essentially a silent movie or the video equivalent of a photo opp. The whole thing had a stagey “Truman Show” feel to it. My verdict: two thumbs down, but a free six-pack of Heineken for giving it a try.

My personal conclusion: good marketing video is video that…

Has the honest ring of truth in its storytelling (for example: if it’s fantasy make it obvious that it’s fantasy)
Cares about and respects the audience
Engages me and makes me honestly care about the subject
Uses humor in a natural vs. cartoonish way
Surprises me, on the upside

What else makes marketing video good video? What do you think, as marketers or consumers? Please comment below.