Lion Cub’s Cookies: Crowdfunding + Storefront Announcement

 

the concept

In Fall 2020, the founder of Lion Cub’s Cookies (LCC), a cookie delivery service born out of the pandemic, was ready to take the next step by announcing he was building a physical location AND launching a $40,000 crowdfunding campaign. While LCC had a strong Instagram presence and loyal followers, the founder wanted to reach a larger audience quickly and turned to Geben to spread the word about the storefront and meet his crowdfunding goal through public relations.

With the main goal to raise brand awareness for the storefront while reaching the crowdfunding goal, Geben developed a media relations strategy that showed roaring success. 

the execution

Understanding the media, competitor and social media landscape and how it relates to LCC’s crowdfunding campaign and storefront announcement, Geben began to develop a three-pronged media relations strategy that would last the next several months:

  • Partnership announcements to raise brand awareness (early October)

  • Crowdfunding + Storefront Announcement Launch (mid-October)

  • Evergreen stories related to Lion Cub’s Cookies backstory, brand, and products (Nov - December)

Partnership Announcements: Within days of kicking off and getting a plan approved by the client, Geben began outreach for a partnership cookie between LCC and Watershed Distillery. Because this was LCC’s first foray into media relations, this first announcement resulted in cookies being sold out at a popup market during COVID before the festival was even halfway through. 

Crowdfunding + Storefront Announcements: Because the crowdfunding + storefront announcement went live on a specific day, we utilized an embargo in our outreach to maximize the number of outlets sharing the news on the same day, thus creating a unified “moment” that everyone in central Ohio was talking about LCC at the same time, building buzz among the general public. 

Evergreen Stories: Continuing our outreach, we were able to secure more lifestyle stories in both print and on TV exploring how LCC had grown so quickly, and the origin story of the company and its founder.

the result

Geben more than doubled our communication objective with 15 total media placements. This media coverage led to a successful crowdfunding campaign, raising $47,173 in just 30 hours. Additionally, traffic on the LCC website had an overall drastic increase in overall awareness with a150% increase in new visitors to the website and a 135% increase in page views. 

As Lion Cub’s Cookies continues to grow, Geben hopes to continue supporting the founder’s efforts to be involved in the community and elevate important causes.