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It was near the end of the workday when Mark Carson stumbled upon the Big Break for Small Business contest on a website he checks regularly.
Late enough that he could have put off entering the contest until the next day, and then maybe the next. But something about the contest — offering the chance for a social media makeover from the experts at Facebook headquarters and a $20,000 cash prize — compelled Carson to answer the three essay questions on the spot.
“It was going to expire in a day or two. I just decided I better jump on this right away. I must have had the right inspiration,” said Carson, who owns Fat Brain Toys and Fat Brain Toy Co. with his wife, Karen.
Fat Brain Toys is one of 10 finalists out of more than 11,000 applicants to the Big Break contest, sponsored by American Express Open and Facebook. After two weeks of voting on the contest's Facebook page, five winners will receive the coveted prizes.
“One of the reasons we liked them for this is they have a very loyal following. ... That's one of the keys to successful social media,” said Julie Fajgenbaum, vice president of brand marketing and social media for American Express Open.
Fat Brain, she said, also is “early in their evolution” of social media marketing. That, she said, would make it an informative and helpful case study for thousands of other small businesses if they are selected as a winner.
Fajgenbaum, a mother of three, was a FatBrainToys.com customer long before the contest. “People who like them follow them a lot,” she said.
The online educational toy store was founded in 2002 in the Carsons' Elkhorn-area basement. The wholesale original toy company followed in 2006, then a bricks-and-mortar store near Village Pointe and a direct mail catalog. Its toys now are shipped around the world.
American Express Open filmed a video of each of the 10 contest finalists and will feature each on the contest's Facebook page, www.facebook.com/Open. Each of the companies — all U.S. small businesses — is expected to drive traffic from its customers to the site, Fajgenbaum said.
The Carsons and their team at Fat Brain Toys developed a plan that will launch today to coincide with the start of the voting that will include promotion on its fatbraintoys.com site, to its vendors and others.
Carson said winning the contest would position the business in a way that hasn't been achieved so far.
While the online toy store is known among parents across the country for its recommender tool — by age and gender — and ease of use, the company's social media presence, in Carson's words, is “deficient.”
“We fell behind the curve on that,” he said. “I guess that's why I was willing to go out there and say we could definitely use a social media makeover. The one-on-one tutelage (at Facebook headquarters) would be the ultimate prize.”
Contact the writer:
402-444-1037, michaela.saunders@owh.com
twitter.com/SaundersM
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