tomato tomto

To: Kenton Larsen, Public Relations Instructor From: Tedi Gilmartin, Tomato Tomto Public Relations Coordinator March 18, 2015

Magazine Trade Fair Launch Proposal

Executive Summary

This proposal outlines and analyzes a strategic plan to ensure Tomato Tomto Magazine has a successful and profitable Magazine Trade Fair Launch. The Tomato Tomto team aims to create brand awareness and fundamentally increase exposure in the local market. This launch plan is the best option to achieve these objectives.

We will use online ad campaigns and social media contests, media tactics like posters, invitations, newspaper and radio promotions, and free food giveaways to reach our target demographic, female students in the 21-35 age bracket, at Red River Colleges downtown campuses.

During the trade fair, we will partner with the Culinary Arts program at Red River College to offer a free crepe making station, create a contagiously fun atmosphere, and appeal to one of peoples most primal desires, to eat! We will also have an interactive photo booth and a videographer for the day. We will ensure our efforts have not only been entertaining for event-goers, but the return on the investment for the event is high.

We will follow up with an evaluation of the preparation, implementation and impact of the event.

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Table of Contents

Executive Summary

Purpose Statement

Situation Analysis

Target Audience and Analysis

Desired Outcomes

Launch Strategy and Rationale

Budget

Evaluation

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Purpose Statement

The purpose of this social media/launch plan is to generate as much publicity, notoriety, and momentum for our magazine as possible, leading up to and including a successful Magazine Trade Fair on Thursday, April 2.

This campaign:1. Puts the magazine at the forefront of our targets minds and creates brand interest.2. Gets people talking about our magazine and encourages our target public to buy it when it comes out. 3. Includes a way to build a database of people who are interested in our magazine and a plan to convert them into readers and buyers later. 4. Harnesses new and traditional media, PR and publicity to reach potential readers. 5. Gets people talking about the magazine by giving them a stated or implied invitation to participate online and at the Trade Fair.6. Is fun.

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Situation Analysis

Tomato Tomto is a gourmet food and social media magazine for the amateur in all of us. Tomato Tomto makes creating delicious dishes, social media and marketing accessible to aspiring foodies. At the trade fair, the Tomato Tomto booth will feature a photo booth with cooking and food-inspired props, with a live feed of the photos, and free samples of gourmet food served by our friendly team. Tomato Tomto educates and targets women ages 21-35 who arent necessarily mothers looking for childrens lunches, but rather gourmet food at a low price.

Strengths Tomato Tomtos internal strengths begin with our great team. Evan Matthews, Erin DeBooy and Laura Wiens are very talented writers, and I am stronger with the visual elements of the magazine, so together we make a well-rounded and ambitious group. Another strength is our connection to the Culinary Arts program at Red River College. We contacted instructors for articles, and built a relationship with Tim Appleton, culinary arts instructor, who has offered student volunteers and free food for the trade fair. Our launch has great potential to be the most delicious and exciting at the trade fair because of our connection to social media, and free food always makes a winner.

Weaknesses The internal weaknesses that Tomato Tomto could have is our lack of experience and knowledge of gourmet cooking and magazine creation. Our group has lots of ideas for the magazine, but we are not cooking experts or skilled in food photography. We also have a very small budget. Every part of the launch will have to be donated or discounted in order for our team to afford it.

Opportunities Tomato Tomto s social-media campaign could open the door to sponsorships and buzz about our magazine. Tomato Tomtos launch also can encourage young people who do not attend Red River College to consider enrollment in the Creative Communications or Culinary Arts programs. Tomato Tomto will create a name for our team members in the industry and showcase our skills.

Threats Tomato Tomto has to compete with many other magazines and social media campaigns, more established in the market, that can threaten our success. There will also be a lot of competition at the trade fair; other groups may have a photo booth or better free food.

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Target Audience and Analysis

Jessica Johnston Age: 21Description: Jessica is a first-year culinary arts student at Red River College in Winnipeg and lives in West Broadway. She is living on her own for the first time and is working part-time during school. She is an amateur food enthusiast, photographer, cat lover, major tea drinker and Instagram addict. She has always loved cooking. Growing up, she helped her grandmother cook, and hopes to pass on family recipes to her own kids one day.

Likes: Wine, avocados, the Barefoot Contessa, kale, thrift and antique stores Loves: Pineridge Hollow, her cats Wesley and Zeus, tea, and her boyfriend Kyle Dislikes: Unsweetened coffee, mistreated animals, ugly photographs and unmade bedsWatches: The Office, The Food Network, and Gilmore Girls

Primary Target - Young and In LoveWith Cooking.Tomato Tomtos primary launch targets are young, hip and food-loving women aged 21-27. These women love food, and have been in the kitchen since childhood. Older now, these women are starting to find their style, not only in cooking, but also in life. Sometimes they like to spend the weekend at home on the couch watching Netflix, other times they dance on the speakers at a house party. These women are outgoing, creative, active on social media and leaders of their friend group.

Secondary Target: No Babies Yet Please.No Babies Yet Please are women aged 21-29 who are either newly married, engaged, or dating and arent looking to have children just yet. Their parents and pretty much everyone around them are pressuring them to have kids, but these women want to focus on their career, finishing up schooling, or their new marriage. In the summer they like to go to the cottage and relax on the dock with a margarita, and in the winter they like to work on DIY home dcor projects, crochet and scrapbook. They love to try new recipes, and share them with her friends when they host dinner parties.

Name: Kelsi Janzen Age: 24Description: Kelsi is a third-year Hospitality student at Red River College. She is newly married to her outdoorsy carpenter husband, Davis. They live in Westwood and are slowly fixing up their new home. They have only been renovating for three months, but with Kelsis style and design sense and Davis carpentry abilities, their home is shaping up beautifully. Kelsi studies for hours on end, but she loves to cook and make crafts as a study break.

Likes: Project-life Scrapbooking Books, Pinterest, A Beautiful Mess blog, and free printablesLoves: Her husband, all kinds of cheese, Jamie Oliver cookbooks and white wine Dislikes: Rum, loud chewing noises, a disorganized house Watches: The Food Network, Netflix documentaries, HGTV

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Tertiary Target: Urban Moms. Urban Moms are women aged 29-35 who are young professionals, mothers with a single child, or those planning for a growing family. They have a part-time job, or work from home, so they can to spend lots of time with their child. They are generally shy and have many goals for their career. They love the young lifestyle and will spend time with friends at local coffee shops, eating at gourmet restaurants, and shopping for baby clothing from the trendy boutiques downtown.

Jane JonesAge: 29Description: Jane is five months pregnant, works from home, and lives downtown. She is a writer and writes restaurants reviews for online magazines. She is also a new partner in an eatery her husband and brother-in-law are opening downtown. Jane is so excited to be a mom; she has already bought piles of hipster baby clothes online. She outsources all photography for her website and blog, but she would like to learn how to use a DSLR camera. She also loves to eat, and not just because shes pregnant, but because she loves food.

Likes: Chickpeas on her salad, iPhone photography, Instagram and PinterestLoves: Rifle Paper Company, donuts, Parlour Coffee, and her husband and two pugsDislikes: Starbucks, Walmart and big chain restaurants Watches: Mad Men, Portlandia, and House of Cards

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Desired Outcomes

Primary Target: Young and In LoveWith Cooking.We aim for this demographic to come to the trade fair and bring all of their friends. We will draw them to our booth with free food, exciting prizes, and our special online media focus. We want them to be so involved with our booth that they purchase our magazine, take part in our social media contests, and make their friends do the same. We believe these women are leaders, and whatever they do, their friends will follow suit.

Secondary Target: No Babies Yet Please.We aim to make this demographic avid readers. We will draw these women in with the gourmet food, upbeat mood of the booth, and the attention-grabbing photo booth. We will encourage them to share trade fair photos and follow us on social media. We want this demographic to buy our magazine and to show their other crafty, foodie, and fun friends just like them they can buy it too.

Tertiary Target: Urban Moms.We will make this demographic aware of our magazine and to encourage avid readership. We want these women to share our magazine with an older demographic who arent necessarily as active on Instagram or Twitter, but are on Pinterest and Facebook more often. We want these women to encourage family and friends to stop by the booth, get involved with the activities, and buy one or more copies.

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Launch Strategy and Rationale

Action - Eat, Drink and Photograph.

Our strategy will focus on emphasizing the fun, young and inexpensive side of gourmet cooking. We will host interactive stunts and contests to promote awareness for Tomato Tomto in Red River College, the Exchange District and throughout the city. We plan to expand our reach through the avid use of social media and guerrilla tactics to position Tomato Tomto as the newest and most innovative food magazine and to ensure a successful launch. Our launch strategy is to create an entertaining, collaborative and delicious experience.

When? We will kick off the promotion the last week of February and one week following the trade fair.

Where?We will focus our efforts within Red River Colleges The Roblin Centre and The Paterson Global Foods Institute. We will also expand our reach to the surrounding businesses in the Exchange District and the young community living and shopping in the area.

Who will be Involved?The Tomato Tomto team is Evan Matthews, Laura Wiens, Erin DeBooy and myself, Tedi Gilmartin. We are recruiting the help of two or three culinary arts students at The Paterson Global Foods Institute at Red River College and instructor Tim Appleton. We will also invite videographer, and friend of Tomato Tomto, Evan Bergen to film the events at the trade fair.

What will Happen?Leading up to the trade show, we will begin to promote our trade show booth with teaser photographs and videos on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter accounts. We will publicize for the two weeks leading up to the event by handing out flyers and tomato-shaped invitations in the both Downtown Red River College campuses.

At the trade fair, we will have a photo booth set up with a professional backdrop and studio lights. The booth will feature giant cut-outs of food - tomatoes, cucumbers, and grilled cheese. The photos will be streamed live to the TV screen. Our videographer will also be constantly filming and posting promo videos to our social media accounts throughout the day and playing them live on the TV.

We will also have a crepe-making station, manned by culinary arts students from The Paterson Global Foods Institute. Event-goers can try making crepes themselves and photographing their food at the photo booth. 6

We will also have a hashtag contest at the trade fair. We will urge event-goers to photograph themselves with their crepes, the giant food props, or our magazine and hashtag #tomatotomatomag on Instagram. Everyone who uses the hashtag will be entered in the draw to win a free photo shoot. We will choose a winner, who can schedule the photo shoot any time in the next year. We will continue the buzz after the trade fair by thanking each person who was involved with our social media accounts that day, by sending them an online coupon for a free meal at The Paterson Global Foods Institute. Well also feature photos from users who didnt win the grand prize on the Tomato Tomtos Instagram page. We will award the grand prize three days after the event.

Communication

Key Messages and Persuasion We want to educate our audience about Tomato Tomto and the magazines innovative social media, marketing and blogging angles. We want to educate students at Red River College, the Exchange District, local restaurants and foodies to associate Tomato Tomto with class, style, delicious food and marketing knowledge.

We want to promote Tomato Tomto as a leader in innovative gourmet food practices and a front-runner for social media advocacy. We will persuade our audiences to get involved with contests, social media tactics like fan-featured photos, free giveaways, and an inviting atmosphere at the trade fair.

Advertising and New MediaWe will constantly use paid and organic advertising on social media. We will run a Twitter ad campaign for two weeks leading up to the event, sending out promoted tweets to aim at our target demographic. We will also get a following on Twitter by following food bloggers, restaurants, Red River College students, Exchange District businesses, Creative Communications alumni and local women who fit our target demographic. We will post videos and photos weekly promoting the magazine and trade fair events. We will also have re-posting contests on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, and a hashtag contest on the trade fair date.

We will also create a Facebook event for the launch and invite local businesses, restaurants, potential employers, media outlets, and friends and family. Additionally, we will post photos and video teasers about the event every week.

During the trade fair, we will also be constantly connected to social media and the advertising campaign on Twitter.

InvitationsWe will create tomato-shaped cards with the trade fair event information to invite local media, food vendors and restaurants. We will send out invitations to places like the Winnipeg Free Press, De Lucas Specialty Food Store, Ciao! Magazine, and 103.1 Virgin Radio.

We will reach out target demographic by handing out tomato-shaped invitations and free beverages for the low price of following our social media accounts during lunch hours at the Red River College

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Downtown campuses. We will even take their phone and follow the accounts for them.

We will also tweet directly to local businesses, media outlets, Red River College students, and potential employers, inviting them to the trade fair and to visit our social media pages. StaffFor the event, we will have two or three volunteer culinary arts students making crepes and teaching participants how to make their own. We will have videographer Evan Bergen operating photo and video live feeds at the booth. We will assign one group member to Instagram updates, one to Facebook, one to Twitter and another will be in charge of the photo booth area. We will delegate tasks like moving tables, setting up signs, and bringing extra copies of the magazine among the four group members three weeks before the trade fair. We will also have two parent volunteers handing out free beverages and stickers.

Rationale Our strategy is to reach our audience by giving them what they want, which is free things. We will persuade our audience with free food, free prizes, and a fun environment. We will make it easy for our audience to be a part of our online presence, again, giving out free beverages while we follow the magazines social media accounts.

We will reach other audiences like local businesses, newspapers and television stations by inviting them with quirky and memorable invitations. We plan to generate a substantial financial base for the magazine through this strategy. We will make our audience feel welcomed, excited, and eager to buy with our fun events and upbeat spirit.

Our target demographic also spends a lot of time online and on social media, so we will utilize the medium by launching Twitter advertising campaigns and generate more buzz and get more followers than we would using social media organically.

We are using the key public relations principles of persuasion to reach our audiences. We are using the identification principle, the whats in it for me principle, by offering free food and contests. We are using the action principle, the make it easy for them principle, by making it easy to enter the contests and to get free crepes. Lastly we are using the principle of familiarity and trust, the use what people know and trust principle, by using social media and local radio and newspapers.

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Preliminary Budget

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Evaluation

We will measure success of our launch in three stages. Preparation, implementation, and impact. We will be successful at the magazine trade fair if, and when, we accomplish these goals.

Preparation We will evaluate our preparation for the trade fair by calculating the analytics for our social media pages and online promotional efforts and analyzing the physical numbers.

Before the fair, our measurements for success are: - Ensuring we have at least 100 Instagram and Twitter followers together - Getting likes on every photograph on Instagram- Ensuring Facebook likes on every photo posted- Confirming participants with our social media repost contests -Getting positive receiver responses from tomato-shaped invitations

ImplementationDuring the trade fair we will measure success by the following goals, and gather this information by asking event goers to fill out a survey at our booth.

Our measurements for success are:-Ensuring the magazines at the trade fair are sold -Ensuring event goers use our Instagram hashtag -Ensuring Instagram users participate in the repost contest- Getting a positive verbal response from the culinary arts students joining us for the day- Getting positive reviews on the taste of the free food from event goers- Seeing participants enjoy the crepe-making station- Creating an inviting atmosphere - Seeing event-goers reading the magazine at the booth- Getting people asking about the process of making the magazine - Identifying strategic future partners

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ImpactIn order to have a successful launch, we must determine if our efforts had a lasting impression on event-goers.

Our measurements for success are:

- Calculating event-goers subscribing to the magazine with how much money was spent - Ensuring new subscribers every month following the trade fair - Ensuring new advertisers contacting the magazine to be a part of the next issue - Hearing buzz about the booth at Red River College the following day- Calculating event-goers tweeting about our magazine during the week following the event- Calculating direct traffic increase on our social media pages - Calculating increased engagement analytics on social media pages - Calculating trade fair cost in relation to new subscribers - Calculating the amount of engaged booth visitors in relation to trade fair event-goers - Getting positive comments on follow-up social media posts

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Tedi Gilmartin 64 Sherbrook Street Winnipeg, MB R3C 2B3

March 10, 2015

Kenton Larsen 160 Princess StreetWinnipeg, MB R3B 1K9

Dear Mr. Larsen,

Ive attached a proposal that outlines the most effective steps we can take to achieve a successful PR strategy for Tomato Tomto Magazine.

This document analyzes the magazines strengths and launch opportunities, and determines weaknesses and possible launch threats. This proposal also includes a target demographic description, strategic advertising, public relations, and event plan, a preliminary budget and outlines measurable evaluation goals.

Not only will this plan create magazine sales, but it will also identify Tomato Tomto Magazine as a leader in the local market. The theme of the trade fair is Eat, Drink, and Photograph. I have planned a fun filled and interactive launch with free give aways, a photobooth, and free crepes. This plan aims to identify new customers, build relationships with our desired demographic, and create a positive financial base for the magazine.

Thank you for considering my proposal. I will be in contact with you on Friday to schedule a time to meet together and discuss this plan further. Feel free to call me at 204-296-3422, or email me at t.jean.gilmartin@hotmail.com.

Sincerely,

Tedi Gilmartin Encl/Student Work