To get maximum mileage from his annual design contest, Dallas florist Brad Weinstein made periodic announcements over the course of seven months.
Seven years ago, Brad Weinstein came across a story in Floral Management about a florist who hosted a live floral design contest with community celebrities — a localized version of ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars.”
“I loved the idea,” said the owner of Petals & Stems in Dallas. “It sounded like a fun way to get people excited about flowers and thinking about our brand without making a hard sales pitch.”
He kept the basic elements the same (well known contestants doing something out of their element to benefit charity), but gave it his own twist by filming the contest and posting it online. “The live audience definitely gave the event energy, but I didn’t want to limit the excitement to people who could physically make it,” Weinstein said.
Over the years, he’s made various tweaks to improve the design contest’s success. His latest one, on Sept. 5, had thousands of viewers and served as a conversation starter for eight months. Here’s what he did to make it bigger than ever:
- Weinstein announced the contest months in advance, on Floral Design Day, February 28.
- The shop then periodically introduced a new contestant and charity every two to four weeks via video. Although Weinstein had pre-selected who would compete, he asked each contestant to “nominate” the next person (à la 2014’s ALS “ice bucket challenge”) to insert a little suspense over whether or not the celebrity would accept the challenge. These videos promoted the contest not just to Petals & Stem’s customers, but also to each celebrity’s followers, as well as their selected charitiy’s audience. Weinstein specifically looked for people with a lot of fans, such as pilot Jake Pavelka, best known for appearing on ABC’s “The Bachelor.”
- In the final week, the Petals & Stems cover and profile photos on Facebook advertised the contest and posts included a daily countdown with a rundown of each contestant and charity.
- Weinstein hired a marketing professional to provide high-quality coverage of the event. She shared a time-lapse video of the design action, set to music from Georges Bizet’s “Carmen,” that then moved into short interviews with each of the six contestants, concluding with instructions on how to vote and the message “flowers say it best.”
- A hefty prize — $1,000 for the contestant’s charity of choice — gave the contest more prestige. A local news station turned up to get footage for its nightly broadcast.
- A weeklong voting period allowed contestants and fans time to share the video 43 times. On Weinstein’s Facebook post alone, the video got more than 6,200 views.
Overall, the event earned Weinstein respect in the community (for supporting charity), netted him several thousand email addresses and got his brand extra exposure during a traditionally quiet period. “Best of all, it was fun,” he said. “People are already asking me if they can be a contestant in 2018.”
