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Securing a hit in Walt Mossberg’s column in The Wall Street Journal is the Holy Grail of many a tech PR program. The Hoffman Agency was recently able to make it a reality for Web 2.0 client Groople.
Groople offers a collaborative Web site for group travel planning. In early 2008, when its CEO indicated to the Agency that he was headed to Washington, D.C. for business, the account team sprang into action to leverage this trip for PR. Pitching him on the untapped $187 billion opportunity that is the group travel industry, Hoffman landed Groople’s CEO Mike Stacy a meeting with Mossberg at his D.C. office.
As a result of the meeting, Mossberg’s colleague Katherine Boehret decided to review Groople’s Groopvine service, which combines social networking and travel planning tools online. In the span of five days, the Hoffman team helped Groople completely revamp its marketing materials for this opportunity, served as a liaison between the company and Boehret to guarantee her review went smoothly and any queries were answered, and navigated an intense string of questioning from Boehret as she vetted the service for her review.
When Boehret’s review ran in Mossberg’s column under the headline “Two Ways to Keep Track of Your Travel Plans,” Groople was overjoyed. Boehret wrote, “Groople’s Groopvine will encourage groups to get excited about their coming
trip …”
On the day the article ran, traffic to the Groopvine site increased six-fold and the number of trips created on Groopvine grew 50 times the number of the previous day. Groople also noticed an increase in the number of inquiries from potential partner companies. All in all, the article helped to raise credibility for unknown Groople, landing the company its spot on the travel industry map.
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