How to create an interactive Holiday Map - and sell positions
Media: The Pottstown Mercury
Site: Pottsmerc.com
Traffic: 300,000 UV's
Key Executive: Jared Semet, Online Sales Manager
Challenge: The Pottstown Mercury may serve a small community but in December the town is alive with Holiday events and Christmas tree sales at local farms. Online sales manager, Jared Semet wanted to take advantage by creating an interactive "holiday map."
Strategy: The Mercury's editorial cartoonist rose to the occasion, creating a hand-drawn map of the area. Then the programmer simply put in a line of code that made the Christmas lights blink and the candles glow; "subtle details but eye catching at the same time."
Only online advertisers with holiday-oriented events were asked to be on the map.
"We were hesitant at first, since we knew that was limiting our reach, but even the first generation product pitch had (merchants) signing up on the spot. They loved the idea."
Each advertiser had an icon created by the cartoonist, and linked to a secondary page with information about sales event, phone number an a video shot by the sales people (videos are sent to a third party, Affinity for editing).
Results: Besides being a hit with readers, the map generated revenues of $13,000.
Our take: This is an untraditional and visual way to showcase holiday merchants and maps can have a variety of applications. The hand-drawn look and flashing lights separates the brand from all the other "real" maps. This idea could be used to brand a small neighborhood's "shoppers row," map the Farmer's Markets, Halloween stores and parties or other ideas, including more non-denominational holiday theme. Kudos to the Mercury for creative and teamwork.
The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and MediaExecsTech, developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine, to showcases perspectives from around the world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.
