Oscar Weekend and Leveraging Events for your Company by Kevin Dwinnell

Do you know the event calendar that impacts your business? If not, it’s worth a good look because it can have a material impact on your business, and there are tools that can help.

Sadly, Brand Thunder is not going to the Oscars. Is an entertainment-award Boom (branded browser) in our future? Almost certainly, but we’re not there this year because we have to choose wisely where to spend our limited resources. So, when we mapped out the year of development and our goals, we expected major brands to sign (Thank you NASCAR Nationwide Series, Major League Soccer, Dartmouth College and a host of others). We also expected pockets of development time to build our “non-branded” Booms.

For the non-branded versions, we focused on the holidays knowing they would give us an ongoing deadline and multiple opportunities to refresh a build, maintain an audience and attract a new one. (Self Promotion Warning: Check out our Gallery to see the St. Patrick’s Day Boom. Not only will it get your Irish up, but you can choose one of two styles – Shamrock or Pub.)

If you want to find the relevant events for your business, it’s worth spending time in tools like Yahoo! Buzz or Google Trends. Search volume is a great way to understand consumer demand, and there’s a cyclical nature to this. The patterns of searches for recurring events tend to repeat each year. This will provide you not only with the topics of interest, but when they surface in the mind of the consumer. It’s crushing if your product arrives before the event, but after consumer interest has passed.

Good luck with your special events, and next year we hope you’ll join us at the Oscars.

Posted in Commentary | Tags: Academy Award, brand thunder, Branded Browser, custom browser, Dartmouth College, Google Trends, Major League Soccer, Yahoo, Yahoo Buzz | No Comments »