Blog
Peace Coffee's Melanee Meegan
About Andy Santamaria
Social Media Liaison
Melanee Meegan is the marketing manager at Peace Coffee. She likes to call herself the "bean pusher." She does everything from advertising to packaging to sponsorships and events. Melanee also spoke at Ad Fed's past Green Marketing event and shared her insights in this exclusive interview. Learn more about Peace Coffee on their website and follow them on Twitter.
What's the biggest challenge that you have for marketing?
I have a hard time saying "no." Every idea seems like a good idea and that's something I've had to refine and really weigh out the resources and time and whether it really is going to accomplish what we hope it will accomplish. And when I say "saying no," it means that part of my budget and what I work with is a donations budget. So, we give coffee to non-profit organizations that are hosting events, or doing silent auctions. For the most part, it's kind of a first-come-first-serve basis. It's all part of not being overextended when you're such a small company.
How does social media play a role in your marketing efforts?
First of all, I love Twitter and I love Facebook. For us (because we don't have a retail location) it is really our presence one-on-one with consumers. It's the best thing that ever happened to us in some ways, because I felt like we were living in the shadows of accounts that serve our coffee … we didn't really get to talk with the customers. We were only working with the buyers at the store. Now we can leverage one-on-one relationships to also promote where people can get our coffee. So, it's actually adding value to our accounts, and at the same time, allowing us to get to know the direct consumer of our product.
What are the marketing outlets that you pursue most often?
We do a lot of events: bike events, food events, food and wine shows and the Fresh Taste Festival. In terms of traditional media, we do (local) City Pages, The Onion, and Vita.mn. As far as radio goes, we have a spot on the Current -- we do it all year long. When we do the advertising in those publications, we try to focus on a connection to an event. For example, we're doing a sponsorship right now with the North Star Roller Girls. We'll take out an ad and promote their event as well as our beans. We're only in those publications to focus on our core attributes - organic, fair trade. We do promote the biking, but more in terms of sustainability. It's not like we're going to bike the coffee to California.
Have you done any outreach to local bloggers and amateur writers?
Ok, a super great partnership is a food blog called Simple Good and Tasty. (It's) run by a gentleman named Lee Zucker and he hosts events around town … he just invites people to come talk about local foods and there's no pretense. You can come and you don't have to know anything -- he doesn't have a food background.
Excluding your own work, what kind of environmentally conscious efforts have you seen that are inspiring?
I'm just a big fan of New Belgium Brewery (out of Fort Collins, CO). They have this new thing called the Tour de Facts. It's basically a traveling circus of bikers and it is like nothing I've ever experienced before … it's a way to bring the biker community together and you wear costumes so it doesn't exclude anyone. Everybody comes in costume so you're all alike and celebrating bikes. It's not wasteful so when they do the events, there is like 2% waste. They also give the beer sales to a local non-profit in each city.
