Introduction
FemMed Inc. teamed with Risdall Marketing Group (RMG) to launch a new product that solved a problem affecting half of the world's population by enabling women to go to the bathroom standing up. This submission highlights the efforts put forth by RMG to launch the product - GoGirl - and the success FemMed experienced by empowering its most vocal advocates who were no longer satisfied with "taking life sitting down."
The Short Story
During the summer of 2008, FemMed Inc. came to Risdall Marketing Group looking for an agency that would take a chance and launch an eyebrow-raising product named "StandUp" that enabled women to go to the bathroom standing up whether they were camping, just had back surgery or were pregnant.
The product had been developed and redeveloped off and on for 10 years. FemMed came to RMG looking for guidance on marketing a product that was not only of a sensitive nature, but one that addressed a difficulty most women didn't even recognize as a problem.
Over the course of the next six months, RMG gave StandUp a total brand makeover from which emerged "GoGirl," the female urination device (FUD) for women who don't take life sitting down.
GoGirl launched at the Minneapolis Women's Expo on Jan. 16, 2009, and during that make it or break it weekend, GoGirl was the most trafficked booth - getting rave reviews from everyone from female pilots to a Minnesotan beauty queen. From there, GoGirl has never looked back.
The Challenge
Although having to sit down to go to the bathroom is an inconvenience that half of the world's population has to deal with on a daily basis, it has been accepted as a part of life because until now, there was no alternative.
The primary challenge of GoGirl was not only to introduce the brand to consumers, but to generate category awareness for a product that provided the solution to a problem most women have never even thought about, and then to get them to take the product seriously and not just brushing it off as some joke or a spoof.
The Initiative
To get the ball rolling, RMG created profiles on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and MySpace and set up a system to monitor online brand mentions using Andiamo Systems before the GoGirl website even went live. Once the website did go live in January 2009, it also featured a blog and sharing buttons which made it easy to connect with GoGirl on the social medium of your choice. Those social media sites and the monitoring of online conversations would become the bread and butter of GoGirl's marketing efforts, even in the midst of a highly successful integrated initiative involving multiple media channels.
Part of the success of the social media initiative was due to the friendly and empowering brand voice that allowed consumers to feel comfortable speaking about what once was, and for some still is, an awkward topic. The viral nature of the social media sites encouraged early innovators to share their knowledge of GoGirl with their friends. It also allowed GoGirl to connect with female bloggers who were excited and more than willing to review GoGirl.
Although women enjoyed interacting with GoGirl representatives online, unbiased product reviews by other women like themselves became increasingly important in answering questions about whether the product "really worked." In the end, these "everywoman" reviews spoke much louder than our marketing messages ever could.
The female blogging community quickly became GoGirl's largest asset as they were upfront, open and honest about a topic that most traditional news outlets couldn't - or wouldn't - touch.
GoGirl also used these social media sites to promote the next stops on the GoGirl Tour, a series of events all over the country that allowed GoGirl to get the product in front of people on a face-to-face basis.
The tour started out small and stuck to events in the Midwest, but this past summer, GoGirl traveled to the Outdoor Retailers Event in Salt Lake City, Utah, the annual BlogHer conference in Chicago and even the Indianapolis 500.
The tour was critical in allowing GoGirl representatives to fully explain the concept behind GoGirl and providing consumers the opportunity to see the product, which can be difficult for some women to visualize. The tour also provided photo and video content for all of the GoGirl social media sites. As a result, the sites became so rich in content that media inquiries for photos were directed to Flickr and media inquiries for testimonials were directed to the Facebook fan page wall.
The tour stop in Chicago for the annual BlogHer conference in July provided a very special opportunity for GoGirl representatives to meet and thank the bloggers who had been so vital in their success. It also offered a chance for GoGirl to begin relationships with new bloggers who wanted to share this revolutionary product with their readers.
The Results
Using social media to prompt grassroots awareness and generate traditional media attention, GoGirl appeared in two dozen television markets the week after a local television news segment ran as a result of monitoring Twitter and finding a local reporter talking about GoGirl. What started out as primarily an online initiative quickly spread both online and off, and in less than eight months:
- The president of GoGirl has been interviewed on almost 30 radio stations all over the nation including KISS-FM in New York City.
- GoGirl has been featured in more than 20 top print publications all over the world including French Cosmopolitan.
- GoGirl has been featured online in more than 100 blogs, news sites and online magazines including the Lifetime Network, Glamour, Marie Claire and even a blog written by a female soldier serving in the Middle East.
- GoGirl has been featured on 30 different television programs including The Today Show, The Doctors and Chelsea Lately.
In addition to the staggering amount of earned media coverage, web traffic topped out at 36,000 page views in one day - crashing the server several times before leveling off to 2,500 visits per day. GoGirl currently ranks number one on Google and Yahoo! for all variations of the word "GoGirl" and related product searches.
In addition to raising awareness and allowing GoGirl's most passionate advocates to lead the charge, RMG, with the help of the online community, was able to sell out inventory that was supposed to last six months in only two and a half months. GoGirl is also moving into retail locations six months ahead of schedule.
The company, which rose from the ashes in the middle of the most sever economic recession since the Great Depression, is moving ahead full steam as a result of a quality product, the dedicated efforts of Risdall Marketing Group and the immense support of its many brand champions both online and off.
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