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Community Corner

Closing In On Sweet Peeps Victory

Follow us on our journey to Peeps greatness

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about . And I have to admit, I was not completely honest with you, gentle readers.  You see, the Washington Post contest was not the only one we entered. My Peeps partner and I are so competitive, that we hedged our bets this year and entered our diorama into five different contests across the country.

And guess what? Just this week, we received an email letting us know we are finalists for the contest at the Chicago Tribune. Though we are extremely excited and gratified to have realized a dream, being a finalist means we need to get our diorama to Chicago to be photographed and then mercilessly scrutinized and judged (just like the girls on America’s Next Top Model).

Of course, we could probably ship this thing. But who knows how it would travel?  Also, there is no glory associated with sending a FedEx box. So we decided we must go to Chicago with our diorama and hand deliver it, and both our husbands were supportive of the decision. (When I called Hillary to ask if her husband was OK watching their two young boys all weekend while she was away, she said, “Well, he said that he did not want to stand in the way of my lunacy … so I’ll take that as a yes.”)

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Here’s where I come clean about something else. Hillary and I are both in marketing, so we are approaching this as good marketers do when presented such an opportunity: We are going to tweet, blog about, update Facebook statuses and chat with Patch readers en route to the Chicago Tribune, which the good people at the Tribune love and are planning to document in a photo essay on their site. Because this is fantastic exposure for Peeps, we contacted their corporate public relations and marketing person and asked them to sponsor our trip (read: pay our airfare in exchange for some Peeps product placement). They got back to us immediately, saying they had never had such a request and would consider it. In the meantime, we contacted the Peeps store at the National Harbor (the only Peeps store in the world, we found out), and asked for some swag. A great guy named Dave who works there set us up with T-shirts, hats, hair clips and foam visors and candy to distribute along the way.

And because our diorama also features likenesses of Larry King and Snoop Dogg, we also contacted them via Twitter to let them know how flattered they should be to be immortalized in marshmallow. Surprisingly, we have not yet heard back from them. The whole thing is such a fun experiment in social media, which we hope will result in a small crowd of supporters at the Tribune offices when we present the diorama.

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All I know is if we come home with the big prize (which is bragging rights … the actual “prize” is a bunch of candy or something…), I’m expecting a hometown parade in Oakton.

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