YC Success Stories

Nudo

When we met the Nudo team in 2009, they were planning to launch their unique Italian “Adopt an Olive Tree” program in North America during the holiday season. With a fantastic idea and a successful brand that was popular amongst food-lovers in Europe, Nudo needed a PR team to introduce their company and concept in the United States and Canada.

We immediately fell in love with Jason and Cathy, co-founders of Nudo, who gave up successful careers as TV producers to build a business in the Italian countryside, and we wanted to be part of their journey. To successfully launch the Nudo brand and boost sales of their olive tree program during the 2009 holiday season, Nudo hired our team to execute a targeted media campaign to place Nudo in the top print, television and online outlets nationwide. It was a mix of our long-standing media relationships and individual pitches that created and maintained a Nudo footprint in North America for the six months leading into Christmas 2009, making the “Adopt an Olive Tree” program the holiday gift of the season.

Yes, our “Adopt an Olive Tree” holiday campaign achieved press coverage in key gift guides like Cooking Light, Travel and Leisure and Better Home and Gardens, but more importantly—and what really makes this a YC Success Story—Nudo reported an increase of sales by 1500% globally as a direct result of the PR program launched in North America that year.

What started as a six-month project for YC MEDIA has turned into an ongoing three-year PR campaign for the growing Nudo business (we guess you could say they fell in love with us, too). As the brand has developed, so have the PR challenges, and our strategy has evolved to drive sales for a range of Nudo products through consistent messaging and press coverage and leveraging traditional and social media.

The second year of the campaign saw an increase in sales of 150%, and in the lead up to the 2012 holiday season, we’re expecting an even bigger success story.

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The JC100: A Social Media Phenomenon

When Julia Child’s longtime publisher at Alfred A. Knopf wanted to celebrate Julia’s centenary in August 2012, they were tight on funds and short on ideas. They asked Kim and her team to create a campaign that would generate interest in Julia, increase backlist sales and set the stage for the publication of Dearie, the biography of Julia that was being published the week before her birthday.

The PR challenge was clear: how do we leverage Julia’s 100th birthday to introduce the world’s first celebrity chef to a younger generation of foodies?

Two weeks later we walked in the Knopf boardroom with the JC100: a 100-day celebration of Julia involving 100 of Julia’s legacy recipes selected by a panel of culinary luminaries, 100 bloggers, 100 restaurants, 100 bookstores, dozens of celebrity chefs and thousands of passionate fans nationwide, which would culminate on August 15th, the day she would have turned 100 years old.

We commandeered the Julia Child Facebook page and turned it into the hub of the JC100—a platform where all JC100 news, events, photos and memories would be featured—and launched a JC100 Twitter feed, Pinterest board and Tumblr page to promote the celebration. We also recruited 100 food bloggers across the country to cook along with us each week.

To add a “real-life” element to what was predominantly a social media campaign, we used our 20 years of relationships in the food industry to get 150+ chefs and restaurants in 31 states across the country involved with our “Julia Child Restaurant Week.” Everyone, from top chefs like Emeril Lagasse, Thomas Keller, Alice Waters and Barbara Lynch to small-town bistros, joined the JC100 in developing Julia-inspired menus.

The YC MEDIA team grew the Julia Child Facebook fan page from 52,000 likes to 72,000 likes in just 100 days, without any advertising or paid-for placements. All new likes, comments and shares were earned purely through engagement and promotion. With the JC100 Twitter handle, we hosted three successful Twitter parties, and by engaging restaurants, chefs, bloggers and other online influencers we achieved trending status worldwide and in the United States for the #JC100 tag.

The JC100 itself saw coverage in traditional media outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and USA Today as well as dozens of top daily newspapers across the country including the Boston Globe, Dallas Morning News, and the New York Post and was kicked off with a syndicated feature on the Associated Press wire. Our 100-day celebration was mentioned on national TV—The Chew and CBS Evening News—and popular radio stations like WNYC’s The Brian Lehrer Show and Sirius XM’s Martha Stewart Living. And perhaps in the biggest coup, the New York Magazine “Approval Matrix” anointed the JC100 “highbrow and brilliant.”

By Julia Child’s 100th birthday everyone in the food world was talking about this great culinary legend—and not just the audience that grew up with her. By leveraging the short campaigns with PBS.org and WGBH and working with the blessing of the Julia Child Foundation, her incredible legacy as the world’s greatest culinary treasure infiltrated the Twittersphere, Facebook, food blogs and Pinterest for 100 days straight, and now the team at Knopf has a whole new Julia Child fan base to engage.

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