Comments on: Ugly patio furniture contest needs publicity ideas

By: Andew Maine

Andew Maine — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:16:27 +0000

Hi Jill,

I know this is a little late for me to address but with regards to your publicity problems, I suggest you have posters or conduct some forums with organizations which could both provide the manpower and the round up participants for your events. Those environmental groups would love the concept on which your event is based upon. This will be useful if you’re planning on doing the contest annually. And by the way, please post the details if you’re indeed pushing through with a similar event. I have some designs myself which I based on the patio furniture of http://www.cozydays.com/. Of course, I improvised and had alternatives for the pieces in my set just like you did.

I hope it helps and more power to your company for organizing such events!

By: fred

fred — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:00:31 +0000

grow some type of herb inside of the containers, a little greenhouse

By: Jill

Jill — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 18:38:14 +0000

Thank you to everyone and great ideas! I will put them all to the test and let you know how it turns out! Thanks again!

By: Hendry Lee

Hendry Lee — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:59:52 +0000

Contests are all over the place within Twitter. Zappos has done it successfully, as well as solopreneurs.

Nothing allows you to interact with your target market more directly than Twitter. With the power of retweets, your contest can go viral.

Not to mention that it makes a good case study for many bloggers to write about, increasing your publicity even more.

By: Betsy

Betsy — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 23:24:57 +0000

There are tons of sweepstakes sites all over the web where you can post your contest. Some of the best are http://www.online-sweepstakes.com and one on About.com
(search for category)to submit. You might not attract the customers you seek, but you never know. They tend to self-select out by requiring a photo.
Also:
- team up with a national sponsor or home store or
local or national landscape chain? Or even your
stone source.
- assume you have sent to trade pubs in landscape, furniture, retailers, and furnishing industries?
- HGTV and like-minded shows for an episode or even
a series?
Good luck.

By: tonya

tonya — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:04:51 +0000

I am a huge fan of design, especially “green” design (and I think this might qualify!) and I have a Google reader FULL of design blogs. I would recommend that Jill put together a little blurb about the contest along with some photos of her products, and submit them to different design blogs. I have a bunch of them in a list if she’d like to email me, but she can go to google and type in “design blog” and she will find a ton of them.