Park&Co

Online media center driven by social media helps educate distributors and save FLP a lot of money.

When you're a business with 9 million distributors in over 120 countries, you've got your communications work cut out for you. Forever Living Product International is the world's largest grower, manufacturer and distributor of aloe vera-based health and beauty products. For years, we've written, produced and distributed long and short form videos for their distributors around the globe. Over our fifteen-year partnership, we sent these videos out via satellite, VHS, Beta SP and DVD in every variety of TV format. All of these methods represent costly, cumbersome, time-intensive, ways of duplicating and distributing content. For years we'd been looking for a better way, and finally, the advent of high-speed internet and social media presented us with one.

Our first step was to take full advantage of free social media tools like YouTube. We built a YouTube channel called AloePod, and began populating it with a host of new and archived content. Files of new programs are sent electronically to countries throughout the world, where they can make a translated version and upload to the AloePod for everyone in their country to view.

Next, we put the power of the FLP content directly into the hands of distributors by offering branded video iPods for sale at the company's 30th Anniversary Super Rally. Each AloePod came fully loaded with the latest video content.

With their hands and home computers filled with fresh content, the final step was to make sure they could always get more. The official FLP Online Media Center, AloePod.com, allows the company to upload and archive its entire audio and video library in the form of podcasts, which distributors can then access and download through iTunes. The media center makes the flow of information seamless as subscribers receive new content either directly through AloePod.com downloads or automatically via RSS feeds.

FLP became one of the first companies in the direct marketing industry to successfully leverage the power of social networks to improve its business model, communications capabilities, and environmental impact.

The company's AloePod initiative has not only expanded its global reach, but saved $300K per year and a ton of headaches in the process. And with such an improved distribution system, that 10 millionth distributor is just that much closer.

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