Virginia Miracle

As the Miracle clan prepared for our beach trip this week, I moved from mildly amused by the colorful new vineyard vines store in Georgetown to borderline obsessed. While I had admired the slice of Martha’s Vineyard life offered in the store since its opening and had even directed visitors staying with us to check it out, I hadn’t taken the purchase plunge myself.

Once I started buying, I couldn’t stop. Why? The store is not just about the merchandise, nor is it just about the Vineyard lifestyle (or the “Good Life” as they call it) – it’s about being a part of a great entrepreneurial dream. In the words of founding brothers Shep & Ian:

“In 1998 we started vineyard vines on Martha’s Vineyard, and we’ve been having the time of our lives ever since. We’re brothers who decided to leave corporate jobs in New York City to pursue the American Dream. With no money and little experience, we set out to make ties that represent the finer places and things life has to offer. We’re pleased to have expanded beyond the shores of the Vineyard and now offer much more than just ties”.

I can guarantee this is a critical part of their merchandising, because they tell “Our Story” across all customer touchpoints – catalog, in store, on almost every single page of their website, and even the polo short tags read “vineyard vines by shep & ian”. On the section of their website, you are transported out of e-commerce and into a robust online realm that is what vv is selling beyond clothes including:

The Dream – media clips and videos that show the brothers telling their story. A great Entrepreneur clip shows them going from $2m in sales in 2002 to $372m in 2006.

Customer Community – photos of everyone from Violet Affleck to everyday other vv customers wearing the clothes doing everything from getting married to boating with Walter Cronkite (no kidding). You are invited to send in yours too.

Whale Tales – the stories of notable customers told with photos of them modeling their favorite vv outfits.

This is a remarkable case of a business sharing its story – not just by telling it, but inviting you to participate, meet them, come to their events, and contribute your own stories and photos as customers are also a part of “Our Story“.

I wonder how many other business I patronize also have remarkable stories that they aren’t telling? Or do they just not want to invite me in?

Vermont Teddy Bear picked up my rant in their Google alerts and reached out to me through Facebook to explain the situation (it was an affiliate, not them) and shared their desire to investigate.

I just posted the full scoop on the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence blog here.

I wrapped up my week last week in New York at 2 amazing in-person events for active online social media creators: BlogHer Business and Blogger Social ‘08. I walked away with more robust connections with people I already knew online and a list of new blogs that I should be reading. It is difficult to wrap up 72 amazing hours, but I’ll try.

BlogHer Business was an eye opening event. Major standouts to me were results of Compass Partners research on women in the blogosphere, hearing about Kodak & DC Goodwill’s blogging efforts. On the blogger engagement front, Method, Graco & GM shared the results of their respective approaches of working with bloggers – sharing the stage with bloggers when they presented the case study. For any PR person who has ever considered blasting a press release to bloggers hoping it will stick, they would thing again after hearing some of the horror stories of bad influencer outreach told along the way. My favorite comments from bloggers:

Typing my name after “dear” is not a personalized approach.

You wouldn’t knock on my door and ask to put a billboard for a product I have never seen or touched in my front yard – why would you think I would post a jpeg for a product I’ve never seen or touched on something as personal as my blog?

Just an hour after BlogHer Business wrapped, I was off to Blogger Social. The concept for the event was simple – get a bunch of bloggers together to hang out and have fun. That’s it. No powerpoints, no projects, no pitches – social. One of the highlights for me was being able to put a face to The Viral Garden. Mack Collier was one of the first bloggers to pick up and write about the Fiskateers crafting ambassador movement on which I had the pleasure to work during my time at Brains on Fire. Being able to spend time talking to him in person took us from the mutual admiration society to real friends and I look forward to our next meeting.

Overall lesson from the 3 days?  Twitter is real – get to know it.

Many, many, many thanks for the event planning/hosting duties of CK and Drew and the friendly welcome from my new BS08 friends (listed below).  How many days until BS09?

Susan Bird Tim Brunelle Katie Chatfield Matt Dickman Luc Debaisieux Gianandrea Facchini Mark Goren Gavin Heaton Sean Howard CK Valeria Maltoni Drew McLellan Doug Meacham Marilyn Pratt Steve Roesler Greg Verdino CB Whittemore Steve Woodruff Paul McEnany Ann Handley David Reich Tangerine Toad Kristin Gorski Mack Collier David Armano Ryan Barrett Lori Magno Tim McHale Gene DeWitt Mario Vellandi Arun Rajagopal Joseph Jaffe Rohit Bhargava Anna Farmery Marianne Richmond Thomas Clifford Lewis Green Geoff Livingston Kris Hoet Connie Reece CeCe Lee Toby Bloomberg Seni Thomas Darryl Ohrt Joe Kutchera Paul Dunay Marshall Sponder Chris Kieff Tara Anderson Jason Falls Paul Soldera Roberta Rosenberg Saul Colt Todd Andrlik Nathan Snell Ryan Karpeles Mike Sansone Jennifer Laycock Neil Vineberg Cam Beck Mike Arauz Matthew Bailey Heather Gorringe John Rosen Cathleen Rittereiser Tamar Weinberg Rita Perea Linda Sherman Matthew McDonald Kaitlyn Wilkins Terry Starbucker
Jennifer Berk Jane Quigley John Wall Scott Monty Kevin Horne Virginia Miracle Amanda Gravel Susan Reynolds David Polinchock Shashi Bellamkonda David Berkowitz Vahe Habeshian

I am in the belly of BlogHer Business and loving it.

Bandwidth permitting (200 women live twittering, blogging and vlogging at the same time is hell on a server), my team is live blogging coverage here.

And I am live twittering here.

We are looking to add to the digital strategy talent on the Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence team in our San Francisco, New York, and DC offices. I shared a long “Personal Ad” style post about this on the OgilvyPR blog today but I will boil it down here to a few words:

• If you enjoy evangelizing the power of social media to people who may not already get it,
• If you read what certain brands, causes, or (currently) campaigns are doing to try to connect with their audiences and your mind starts rattling through what their strategy should be and all of the myriad ways that they could make that come to life,
• If you use every opportunity of someone asking for bright shiny digital object du jour (viral video, Facebok, group, widget application, wiki etc) as an opportunity to back up and talk about communications goals and set the stage for how each of these tactics would be employed in a different scenario

…then I am dying to meet you.

Demand for thoughtful, hyper-creative digital strategy that is built on sound business fundamentals is high and we are excited to grow the team to ensure we can optimize on the new opportunities in our path. If you’d like more detail or to apply, please check out the careers section of the ogilvy website and drop me a line at Virginia( dot )Miracle( at )ogilvypr( dot )com if you’d like to hear more about the various experience levels we’re seeking for the various offices or want to recommend that I reach out to someone in your network. You can also message me through Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter.

Side note: I and other members of the 360 DI team are participating later this week in BlogHer Business and Blogger Social. Hope to see you there!!!