The McRae Agency
Consumer Product Case Study
Yoga Paws
Product Launch
Summary
The McRae Agency was contacted by a mother-daughter team who was trying to launch a new fitness product called Yoga Paws. The product can best be described as “the yoga mat you wear.” Yoga Paws are non-slip mitts that fit on your hands and feet to allow you to practice yoga without a yoga mat, making it easier to practice yoga while traveling, on your lunch break, outdoors, etc., without having to lug around a bulky, dirty mat. Gail Getzwiller, the mother and co-owner of the company, was a successful yoga instructor for more than 20 years, and her daughter (Jamie Getzwiller) had grown up in a home where yoga was a big part of their daily lives.
The product had an interesting story behind its creation: Gail’s husband is in the business of Navajo rugs. Gail wanted to use these beautiful rugs with her yoga classes as well as on her own yoga video/DVD, but found that doing yoga on a yoga mat on top of a rug was not ideal. The yoga mat blocked the beautiful designs of the hand-made rugs, but trying to hold yoga poses on the rugs without a mat was not practical or advisable. So, Gail and Jamie together developed a fitness tool that allowed them to practice yoga safely on the rugs without a mat. Gail’s students immediately fell in love with the convenience of the Paws (which easily fit in a purse, backpack, etc.) and word quickly spread among the local yoga community. Gail and Jamie decided they were on to something and launched a business to manufacture and sell these Yoga Paws. After first working with another PR agency and feeling “burned” by the relationship, they approached The McRae Agency, known for its successful launches of various consumer products. The budget was incredibly modest, particularly for a national product launch, but the agency believed in the product and its owners and was determined to get creative and make it work.
Unfortunately, there was simply no money to conduct formal market research. Instead, we relied on informal secondary research by means of a mini-brainstorming and strategy session on the front end of the project and Internet research on the industry (its trends, key players, statistics to back up our pitches on the growth and importance of the yoga market, etc.). We had to quickly get ourselves up to speed on the yoga field, being that none of our account team members were particularly familiar with the art. This included a “crash course” in yoga by way of Gail’s yoga workout DVD, and immersing ourselves in yoga websites, reading everything we could get our hands on in the yoga press and general interest media, etc. If we were going to sell the advantages of this product, we needed to know what we were talking about. And there was no time to spare. The company needed us to have an almost immediate impact on sales in order to help fund the PR effort, which they were financing from their own personal savings. They trusted our agency to help them make a success for their “baby” and we were determined not to let them down.
We needed to get the biggest-bang-for-the-PR-buck since we were dealing with a tiny budget. We decided on a two-step approach: A news release announcing the product and a basic story pitch letter, which we would need to tweak to target each different niche media category, including:
We were challenged with the task of making a two-person company sound like a larger operation, giving it the credibility of a company worth profiling in major media outlets. Also, it was a “chicken-or-the-egg” situation in which the product lacked major distribution (it was only available online at the time of the launch). The client was looking for some significant media hits to help land some deals with retailers and wholesalers, although we knew the media wanted major retail partners to help add legitimacy to the product. Our media relations skills would be put to the test to make magic happen almost overnight for practically no budget.
We hit the ground running as soon as the contract was signed in November 2004 in an attempt to secure some media coverage before the all-important holiday gift-buying season. We decided to first go after the “low-hanging fruit” – by pitching stories to the local media in San Diego (where the daughter lived) and in Arizona (where the mother lived) as local interest stories. We targeted the daily newspapers and local TV outlets in these markets since we knew they operated on the shortest lead times. We quickly secured placements in the San Diego Union-Tribune (major daily), NBC 7/39 (San Diego), KUSI TV (San Diego), Channel 12 (Phoenix) and Channel 3 (Tucson), which helped boost traffic on Yoga Paws’ website and got the phone ringing. This would help buy us some time until we could get the national stories (with much longer lead times) in the pipeline.
Our first major national hit appeared in the April issue (which hit newsstands in March) of Marie Claire, a major women’s magazine (right on target for their demo) with a circulation of just under 1 million. The client went nuts! Others soon followed suit, and the added legitimacy of the media seeing the first hit in Marie Claire definitely helped. Other hits included Health Magazine, Oxygen Women’s Fitness, NY1 (New York metropolitan area), Seattle Times, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, Arkansas Democrat Gazette (this one, surprisingly enough resulted in a ton of orders), Total Body Fitness, St. Louis Post Dispatch, Idea Fitness, Beyond Fitness, Canadian Living, Yogi Times (the top of the client’s wish list), Ms. Fitness, Fitness Business Pro, and Chatelaine (major Canadian women’s magazine). We also have many more confirmed stories with print dates in the coming months, including: Self, Family Circle, Women’s Day, Pilates Style, First for Women and Budget Living. In addition to the U.S., Yoga Paws had also hit the international scene, with stories appearing in Canada as well as Australia (in Who Magazine, a major Australian magazine, similar to our People, from Time-Life).
Results
The results were far better than anticipated. Each time a new story appeared, the client saw a spike in web traffic and sales. (Unfortunately, there was no budget even for a national clipping service, so we relied on our own efforts to track hits. While we were able to confirm and secure copies of dozens of articles, we know we have missed many more.) For a very modest budget, Yoga Paws has been truly overwhelmed by the success of the launch. The publicity has made the product that otherwise would just be another one of those cool ideas that never go anywhere.
In terms of how to quantify the value of this launch, consider this: The ad equivalency of the Marie Claire hit alone was over $142,000). When the total value of all of the hits is added up, it is easily well over $1 million. And The McRae Agency achieved this for less than 1/15 of the value of the Marie Claire hit alone. That’s quite an ROI!
But, perhaps the best gauge of the success of the launch comes from the clients themselves. Here is what Jamie Getzwiller has to say: “The McRae agency has been THE vital component that enabled our company to become recognized and accepted into the yoga community. Their teamwork, enthusiasm and support, along with drive and persistence, have permitted our goals to be met and surpassed by obtaining worldwide coverage.”