Elixir Interactive has shared a very unusual online reputation management study. What is unusual is that the interactive marketing agency, which provides online reputation management and search engine optimization services, and it’s well-respected CEO…
Read the rest of this entry »This past week, Matt Bailey, the president and founder of SiteLogic, Cindy Krum, the Chief Executive Officer of Rank-Mobile, and I taught half a dozen of the modules in the Rutgers Mini-MBA: Digital Marketing certificate program. Rutgers incorporated …
Read the rest of this entry »Two years ago, I wrote “Online Reputation Management Requires Cabinet War Rooms.” In the post, I asked, “Is your company prepared for the inevitable crisis to come?” Today, one of the most important lessons learned from the BP oil spill, Toyota recal…
Read the rest of this entry »Yesterday, I posted Video Marketing Case Studies with David Meerman Scott and Me. At the end of the post, I said, “If you have any video marketing case studies that you’d like to share with us, just mention them.” Silly me.
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Recently, I sat down with David Meerman Scott, the author of the bestseller The New Rules of Marketing & PR: How to Use Social Media, Blogs, News Releases, Online Video, and Viral Marketing to Reach Buyers Directly and the new book World Wide Rave: Creating Triggers that Get Millions of People to Spread Your Ideas and Share Your Stories. I’m the author of YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day, we have the same publisher, and we’re virtually neighbors.
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Can you use social media to sell a $140,000 product?
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We’ve been following NACA’s Save the Dream Tour this year. The first three cities were featured in a case study at SES San Jose 2009 during the How to Optimize for Search & Engage the Community session as well as at the Social Media & Video Strategies Forum during the What Works: Best Practices / Case Studies for Online Video session.
Since then, NACA has held Save the Dream events in Atlanta, Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Las Vegas — and is currently in the middle of an event at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, which will run through Tuesday, October 20.
NACA’s Save the Dream has been an incredible success with over 315,000 participants at the first seven cities, with many thousands having their mortgage restructured with interest rates permanently reduced to as low as 2%. Although there has been some skepticism about how they can do this, NACA has legally binding agreements with all the major lenders/servicers to achieve this.
I spent Friday and Saturday at the Cow Palace to see the event for myself. And I’ve decided to feature an update of their case study at SES Chicago 2009.
To date, NACA has issued 15 optimized press releases about NACA Save the Dream events in eight cities. These press releases have 2,120,603 headline impressions and 32,596 full page reads, according to PRWeb.
The documentary video about NACA’s Save the Dream tour has only 2,920 views. But it has helped to generate coverage more than 29 stories on local TV stations.
NACA’s campaign includes press release optimization, YouTube video, blog outreach, media relations, and Twitter marketing. Through the end of September, it had generated 363 posts, 300 tweets, 21 mainstream news stories, and 7 YouTube videos.
To get a sense of what these stories are saying, read: “The American Dream is not lost- NACA stages Save The Dream Events” by Clifford Wright in the LA Baptist Examiner. Or read “Thousands at Cow Palace seeking mortgage help” by Carolyn Said of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Bruce Marks, NACA’s founder and CEO, was profiled by ABC News on Nightline Sept. 5, 2009. And CBS Evening News with Katie Couric featured a story by Anthony Mason entitled, “Homeowner Hero’s War on Banks,” on Friday evening, Oct. 16, 2009.
Subtitled, “The American Spirit: One Man’s Crusade to Help Others Restructure Loans,” Mason’s story says, “With at least one in every 136 homes at risk of foreclosure, one man has persuaded some mortgage holders to renegotiate with borrowers.”
According to Compete, there were 724,305 unique visitors to NACA.com in July, August and September 2009, more than double the 361,764 unique visitors to the site in April, May and June 2009, and almost triple the 270,486 unique visitors to NACA.com in July, August and September 2008.
Oh, and all those visitors arrived before the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric ran it’s story last Friday. And if the five-day San Francisco event attracts 60,000 participants, which is how many the five-day Atlanta event did, then NACA’s 8-city Save the Dream Tour will have attracted 375,000 participants.
That’s an amazing story for a national non-profit community advocacy and homeownership organization. I’m just grateful that they’re letting me help them tell it.
Last night, the incredible success of the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America (NACA) was featured on Nightline on ABC News. Entitled “The Financial Terrorist,” the story went on the frontlines to Cleveland, Ohio, with NACA CEO Bruce Marks, “a man trying to restore the American Dream.”
It’s worth noting that Marks is a self-proclaimed “bank terrorist,” according to a recent interview in The Boston Globe entitled, “Taking bank chiefs to task to save homes.” Marks explained, “Bank terrorism is a nonviolent way we personalize the consequences of CEOs’ actions. When someone loses their home, they lose their neighbors, they lose their community, and their kids lose their friends and their schools. It’s personal. Lives have been devastated. We go to the CEOs’ homes, usually on Sunday morning, which is family time, in their gated communities.”
I featured NACA’s Save the Dream Tour in a case study that I presented at SES San Jose 2009 during the session entitled, “How to Optimize for Search & Engage the Community.” I also presented excerpts of NACA’s Save The Dream tour documentary produced by DigiNovations at Social Media & Video Strategies during the session entitled, “What Works: Best Practices / Case Studies for Online Video.”
NACA’s Save The Dream tour documentary – excerpts (produced by DigiNovations)
NACA’s “Save the Dream” tour has already helped thousands of homeowners avoid foreclosure, restructure home loans, and reduce mortgage rates. It has used 9 optimized press releases, blog outreach, have a dozen YouTube videos, social media marketing and old fashioned media relations to generate 29 local TV stories, 18 articles in daily newspapers, 272 blog posts, and 246 Twitter tweets. The combined coverage helped to attract over 35,000 participants in Cleveland, 45,000 in Chicago, 40,000 in St. Louis, and 60,000 in Atlanta. But, as I mentioned back at SES San Jose 2009 and Social Media & Video Strategies, NACA’s Save the Dream Tour isn’t over.
It will continue at upcoming events in Phoenix, AZ, at the Phoenix Convention Center from Sept. 25 to 28; Los Angeles, CA, at the LA Convention Center from Oct. 2 to 5; Las Vegas, NV, at the Thomas and Mack Center from Oct, 9 to 12; and San Francisco, CA, at the Cow Palance from Oct. 16 to 20, 2009.
NACA projects that they will be able to help 80% of those who apply. NACA can do this because it has secured legally binding agreements with most of the major lenders and servicers, which covers 90% of the at-risk homeowners.
But, to achieve an affordable solution, participants also need to bring the following documents to one of NACA’s Save the Dream events:
a) Pay Stubs (most recent available 30 days)
b) Monthly Mortgage Statement (most recent available)
c) Property Tax Bill (most recent available)
d) Homeowners Insurance Bill (most recent available)
It also helps to register for the event. At the first four events this summer, NACA had over 500 staff and volunteers who put in long hours and lots of hard work to help homeowners save their dream. Nevertheless, the turnout has been unprecidented.
As Chris Camp of WSB News in Atlanta reported, “Over four days, 60,000 people have been standing in the hot Georgia sun… hoping for salvation in the midst of America’s money crisis. Now it comes down to this. A woman sobs uncontrollably, comforted by friends and her mother….When she lost one of her jobs, her entire world teetered on the edge of disaster. Instead, she came to the Georgia World Congress Center, hoping for a miracle. She found one: the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America.”
