We were given a tour of Rosie’s – here’s our Whrrl story with more details on what Rosie’s Place does and who they help. Happy Holidays.

But one of those times, I sat with Rachel Levy (@bostonmarketer). Rachel has a very interesting story to tell – she recently became the Director of Marketing and Social Media for Second Time Around, a chain of contemporary, designer, consignment clothing & furniture stores. But prior to that, she spent a year off – networking, job hunting and ultimately, with the intelligent use of social media (as well as some tenacity), reinventing herself. (See her recent blog post about this.) In our conversation Rachel stood out – she’s smart, insightful and most of all, she was enthusiastic about finding the right position with the right company.

I’d say she’s found it.

Last night I attended #ShopUp, a shopping event that Rachel planned to help raise awareness of Boston’s Second Time Around (the company has 21 shops in cities around the U.S.). Now, I’m a rabid fashion fan and involved in the industry as a Board Advisor to New York City’s Style Coalition, but last night I wasn’t paying attention to the fashion. I was paying attention to the social marketing of this event – Rachel did an amazing job.

I sat down with Rachel today to ask her about the event. I was so impressed with it, I wanted to share it as a great case study in how social marketing can help any business – when done well. I’ve heard a lot of people claim social media expertise – but anyone can pull off tactics like running a Twitter account. Integrating them into an overall strategy is a different story.

PPR: What was your overall strategy for #ShopUp?

RL: Mainly, I wanted to spread the word about who we are and what we do – specifically, create regional awareness for the Boston store through word of mouth. A specific part of that goal was to get people to interact with the product. Having a party and getting them into the store was the best way to do that. Consignment shopping is a different experience than shopping for new retail – I wanted people to experience it first hand. Lastly, while this event was held in Boston, I also wanted to use it to create national awareness for our 20 other stores – creating curiosity for shoppers to find out about the store near them.

PPR: What was the event?

RL: ShopUp was an evening of shopping and schmoozing. We encouraged shoppers to come by for appetizers and drinks, a little shopping and, in honor of New York Fashion Week, a fashion show. Held at our store, we provided shoppers with 20% off during the event, and handed out 10% off coupons for future shopping. We also encouraged shoppers to bring in any designer clothes to consign that evening.

Christine Perkett (@missusP), Michael Durwin (mdurwin), Carissa O'Brien (@carissao)

PPR: How did you use social media to promote and run ShopUp?

RL: Pre-event promotion included a community contest through Twitter, where our followers nominated the models for the fashion show part of the evening. We created the hashtag #ShopUp for easy tracking of the conversations taking place around nominations and the event itself. Once we had nominees, we had people vote for the four models who would be in the show. This process proved to be very viral – people were really interested because they had a part in creating the show. We also posted news about the event on Facebook. During the event, we had guests vote for the best outfit and model – again, via Twitter. The model who received the most votes for a specific outfit got to take the clothes home. To share the event with those outside of Boston, we streamed live video through UStream, Twittered during the event (using TweetDeck and CoTweet) and we’ll be featuring a compilation video of the entire evening on YouTube. Our photos are also up on Flickr, and many people sent TwitPics during the event as well. Lastly, today we issued a post-event survey through a BostonTweetUp twtpoll.

The runway (photo by Pamela Rosenthal)

PPR: What was the ROI? Did you reach your goals?

RL: Oh yes! About 75 people attended the event and our sales were positively impacted. We experienced a positive return on our investment in regards to revenue vs expenses as well. Although I don’t yet have figures to share around the specific number of impressions driven by the event, I can say that we drove new business – 50 percent of the people who attended had never shopped here before… but either did last night or intend to return, I’m sure. (PPR: Rachel incorporated a smart strategy to ask attendees two questions at the registration table; 1) Have you shopped with us before and 2) Can we add you to our mailing list?)

Congratulations to Rachel and Second Time Around on a terrific event – and to the lucky model/winner (Manolo Blahnik shoes, Escada sweater, jeans & accessories!), Carissa O’Brien.

One such event is the Social Media Breakfast, which was the brainchild of Boston’s own Bryan Person. Bryan founded the concept of the Social Media Breakfast in 2007 and has successfully organized four events to date. His fifth is scheduled for February 13th in Cambridge, Massachusetts and reservations quickly filled up in a few days. Jeff Pulver also brought his flavor of social media to Boston in 2007 in the form of his “Real-Time Social Networking” event which he started in Tel-Aviv, Israel.

The concept is simple. Take online activities like “tagging” or posting on your friend’s wall and apply them to a real person! Jeff provides small stickers for real-time tagging and Post-It notes for people who want to post to each other’s walls. His first of these events in Bean-town was a well received evening affair at Vox Populi. His second was a mash-up between between Bryan’s SMB concept and his own real-time networking idea. Are you ready to move to Boston yet?

Fortunately for those outside of Boston, Jeff has begun taking the Person/Pulver mash-up on the road as “Breakfast with Pulver (and friends).” Scheduled dates for February include:

• February 5th – Princeton, NJ
• February 7th – Washington, DC
• February 12th – Providence, RI
• February 21st – Miami, FL
• February 26th – NYC

A date for San Jose, California is also scheduled for March 17th, but will be specifically for friends attending the Spring 2008 VON.x Conference. Additional events for Chicago, Atlanta, Toronto, Montreal, Nashua, London (UK) and more are being planned for futures dates. A Facebook account is required to get more details on each event and to RSVP.

Employees of PerkettPR will be at Jeff’s Breakfast in Providence on the February 12th as well as Bryan’s Social Media Breakfast in Cambridge on the 13th. I highly recommend attending one or more of the events if you reside in or near any of the cities listed. Its guaranteed to be great time filled with food, fun and networking. Besides, where else can you cover someone with stickies in public and get away with it?!