Dell’s Take Your Own Path campaign is a very smart combination of traditional PR and social media.
The campaign features pioneering entrepreneurs and showcases how their use of Dell technology helps make their businesses successful.
What led to this bright idea?
Listening to their market of SMBs. Dell research shows that these companies make purchase decisions “based on peers and friends and from reading ‘normal’ business publications” like Fortune, Forbes and Fast Company,” Faith Brewitt, Dell’s director of global SMB communications, told PRWeek. “ Medium and small businesses don’t make purchase decisions based on analyst white papers. We want to get away from IT reviews only.”
What are they doing?
They identified interesting, successful entrepreneurs.
The PR group layed a key role in helping determine which Dell customers to feature. “It is not just about how much you buy,” Brewitt said. “We reminded the teams in these countries that it is about… how they use technology differently to make them successful in their industry versus someone else.”
These Dell customers are being featured in a variety of traditional advertising and PR initiatives, including billboards, print advertisements and broadcast efforts in local, national and global markets. The campaign is also being integrated with Dell’s online marketing efforts, expanding on its Small and Medium Business Solutions Center. There’s a new site www.takeyourownpath.com that features the ‘heroes’ and has SMB learning center. Dell is engaging in conversations on social media fronts such as Direct2Dell, Twitter and Facebook. And they’re taking it offline -the Dell heroes are sharing their success stories at various small business events worldwide such as the Inc. 500 conference in Washington, DC, later this month.
A very smart integrated marketing campaign indeed. Dell deserved Jeff Jarvis’ “big wet kiss’ and their PR and social media strategies just keep getting better. This campaign is a classic case study on how to listen, learn and respond.
