No foolin' around: Company fills its fun cup

The question of how to utilize social media to drive more sales, or at least potential sales, confounds many Gulf Coast executives.

But the marketing people at Tervis, a Venice-based drinkware manufacturer, found success in that area, fittingly, on April 1. One of the largest privately held firms in the Sarasota-Bradenton region, the company allowed a group of interns to run loose that day. They made goofy videos and posted joke-like status updates on Twitter and Facebook.

On one video the interns lured executives, including CEO Pat Redmond, into a room by tempting them with a plate of donuts. Then the interns held management “hostage,” so they could take over the company and make some jest executive decisions. A Tervis hot tub, anyone?

Tervis teamed up with Sarasota-based marketing firm 82 West to film and promote the project, a play on the company's logo: Always full of fun. “Although we are a corporation,” Kim Livengood, Tervis' director of public relations and events, tells Coffee Talk, “we are not stuffy.”

The intern takeover project, further, had meaty results. For one, Livengood says the company had about 1,800 views of the videos on YouTube, 1,650 likes on YouTube and 630 Facebook likes in the first 24 hours. Tervis Creative Director Todd Lohrenz, in a statement, adds that “the boost in sales revenue for that day was far beyond our expectations.”