Recently, as I strolled through Boulder’s outdoor 29th Street mall looking for a birthday gift, I passed a window display at Sunglass Hut announcing a contest to hire the company’s full time national blogger.
According to their website promotion, the contest winner will receive a $100,000 salary plus $1000 per month “styling allowance,” as well as a “fully furnished” Manhattan apartment and VIP passes to NYC, Milan and London fashion shows.
Sign me up! I thought as I debated about walking into the store.
The contest kicked-off on October 1, 2010 and ends October 27th. By December the top ten finalists compete in a “blog-off” that runs through December 31st and on January 1, 2011 the lucky winner is announced.
I love my job with Metzger Associates, but I can only imagine how cool it would be to live in Manhattan and blog all day long about fashion and attend the world’s best annual fashion shows. The only thing better would be if the contest also provided a car and driver (it is Manhattan, after all).
Sunglass Hut has just launched one of the most creative national PR campaigns I have seen in a long time (save the Old Spice dude). What’s more, this campaign is an inspired way to hire a pro blogger and score the best of the best. However, if they give the position to that 14 year old fashion-blogging wiz, I will be writing another post on the resulting ridiculousness of their decision. She’s cute and all, but c’mon, she’s no Anna Wintour.
Through their contest entries and PR & marketing campaign, Sunglass Hut will likely get a lot of attention among the nation’s fashion bloggers and wannabes. There’s nothing better than free promotion, especially when multiple bloggers – who have hundreds of thousands of regular readers each – are enthusiastically writing good things about your company. Throwing up a few posters in store windows and generating web landing pages are inexpensive marketing gambles, given the national attention this campaign could (and should) generate. It’s an enterprising use of the exponential value the fashion blogging community offers – especially among women bloggers, who naturally like to share every unique idea in our heads with our readers.
Besides using the otherwise mundane task of hiring as a marketing and PR campaign, Sunglass Hut also signals how hip the company is by directing this campaign at the socially tuned-in blogging community. They aren’t announcing the hire of a corporate copywriter or executive assistant. They are looking for a fashion and social media-savvy expert communicator. It’s brilliant!
Note: Dear Sunglasses Hut, Will it help my entry if I mention that I just purchased a great pair of Dolce & Gabbana shades from your Boulder store?
Kat May
PR & Marketing Specialist
Fashionista & Blogger