5 Marketing Lessons Learned from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

Over the years Alure’s involvement with ABC-TV’s hit show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition has been a rewarding experience for each of us that have been able to contribute to the builds. We have connected with each family and their stories, allowing us to experience the very best humans have to offer. To be on site and witness the commitment of long hours and the effort is inspiring to say the least. Our most recent build provided many of the same lessons and some new ones as well.

Incredible Opportunities through Social Media

The Lutz Family build was the first we were able to complete in the era of social media. We made a conscious decision to share the events leading up to the door knock, throughout the build and eventually during the airing of the show through Facebook, Twitter and our blog. The experience was incredible as we were able to share events in real time and provide timely updates from our President/CEO Sal Ferro on the progress of the build throughout the week. The response was amazing as our communities on Facebook and Twitter grew by leaps and bounds. It wasn’t the growth in numbers that mattered so much as the level of engagement that ensued. Our community became and in many cases contributed to telling the story.

Partnerships are Crucial to Our Success

As we look back, none of what we were able to accomplish would be possible without the contributions of our followers, our staff on site and our partners at New Marketing Labs. As things were coming together leading up to the Lutz build, we knew that we needed a partner to help us accomplish a lot in the short window of time and NML  filled that role wonderfully.

5 Marketing Lessons Learned from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

NML and I have created a white paper that highlights how a brand can engage in these new media channels from a business perspective through social media outreach. These are all lessons we never expected to learn from this experience and they offered us an opportunity to really understand the behaviors needed for effective brand usage of social media. A huge thanks goes out to our community as well as New Marketing Labs for contributing to this learning experience.

Much of this experience was shared on the popular podcast Marketing Over Coffee in which Sal Ferro and I were interviewed in late December 2010. We were honored to be the recipient of the 2011 Best Campaign Award from MOC hosts John Wall and Christopher Penn.

Click here to download the white paper, entitled “5 Marketing Lessons Learned from Extreme Makeover: Home Edition”

To listen to the 25th Annual Marketing Over Coffee Awards, click here to download the podcast.