FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Nancy Cleary
Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Phone: 541-964-3314 Fax: 541-964-3315
E-mail: nancy@box-is.com


Cooperative Media Effort Results in catalog and an appearance on The Rosie O’Donnell Show

April 6, 2001 - Deadwood, OR - – On Thursday, April 12th, the Rosie O’Donnell Show is scheduled to open with the “Moo!™ Mother Owned & Operated InfoCatalog” published last month by Deadwood publisher Nancy Cleary.

Cleary, who founded Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing in 1999, orchestrated an “out of the box” media mailing last December to get the attention of the nationally syndicated talk show – and it worked. Eighty mother-owned and operated businesses from across the United States donated their products and Cleary transformed the mailing into a series of five gigantic childrens' blocks. The sides of the blocks were designed to profile each of the mothers, their products, and the story of how they came to work at home and the support they receive on the Internet.

The mothers are all part of an online gift cooperative called Little Did I Know.com. Darcy Miller, founder of Little Did I Know.com, and Nancy Cleary are collaborating on the “MOO! Mother Owned & Operated Catalog” which provides resources, networking, and consulting to help women successfully run their own businesses from home to be with their children.

“Little Did I Know.com has been one of the biggest factors in my company’s success. It is difficult being one person trying to introduce a new product into the market, and a number of moms in the group have experience in this area. They have taught me how to work with retailers, generate publicity for the product and most important, remind me that persistence will pay off in the end,” says Becca Williams, owner of Portland, OR based WallNutz Paint-By-Number Mural Kits. “I don’t feel like I’m alone in this endeavor. Each mom in this group benefits when another mom succeeds.”

The mailing in early December was only the beginning of this collaboration. Cleary then suggested publishing an edition of catalogs based on the block designs. She envisioned an entire “guerrilla girlfriend marketing plan”(based on the principles of Jay Conrad Levinson’s book Guerrilla Marketing) in which each of the moms promotes the catalog on a local and national level. On December 15th, 2000 Cleary launched an online fund raising campaign - those mothers who could afford the advertising expense pitched in, those who could not sought out sponsors to make up the difference. In 45 days these motivated moms raised the production costs and the “MOO! Infocatalog” went to press.

Cleary landed the industry experts on home-business success for sponsorship: Ellen Parlapiano & Patricia Cobe of Mompreneurs; Priscilla Y. Huff, author of 5 books including 101 Best Home Based Businesses for Women and the new HerVenture.com; Liz Folger, creator of bizymoms.com and author of Stay at Home Mom's Guide to Making Money; Maria Bailey, author of The Women’s Home-Based Business Book of Answers and founder of BlueSuitMom.com. Women.com, the leading women’s internet portal, was a major contributor sponsoring the back page of the catalog. HBWM.com (Home Based Working Moms), WomensNet.net, eNBS.com (National BankCard Systems), Emailcom.com and Rubbermaid also contributed.

Nancy Cleary can currently be heard on the in-flight audio program “Companies on the Move” which is airing on both American and Northwest Airlines throughout April. The media mailing and the catalog are examples of the cooperative marketing strategies that Cleary discusses in the four-minute interview as creative ways to promote her small publishing company.

The story of this collaboration was part of the keynote speech by author Ellen Parlapiano at the “Working Woman Magazine’s Entrepreneurial Excellence Awards” held in Dallas, TX on February 9, 2001, which Cleary and Miller both attended.





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