“Oh Sweet Lorraine” a reminder why we love great PR

Congratulations to Green Shoe Studio for reminding us why we love great PR. You may not have heard of them before, but give it 24 hours as that is all about to change. “Oh Sweet Lorraine” is a song written by a 96 years old widower from Illinois who, with the help of Green Shoe Studio and their campaign ‘A letter from Fred’ has rocketed to the top of the iTunes download chart selling over 500,000 records.

The documentary behind the making of the song is where the real success lies. Achieving nearly 2.5m views already, the short 9min documentary explains the story behind the song. Green Shoe Studio is a music and graphic design studio committed to ‘changing our community one dream at a time’. During a recent online singer/songwriter competition, they received an unexpected entry – A Letter from Fred.

Fred Stobaugh and his wife Lorraine met 75 years ago and would celebrate their 73rd wedding anniversary in June 2013. Unfortunately, Lorraine passed away in April of this year. After seeing the advert for the song writing competition, Fred penned a beautiful love story for his wife titled “Oh Sweet Lorraine”. He sent the song along with a letter to Green Shoe Studio, explaining his story and the events which moved him to write this loving tribute to his wife.

Fred’s entry did not win the competition. But, the organisers were so moved by the story behind the song that they composed and professionally recorded Fred’s love song.

In the documentary ‘A Letter from Fred’, Green Shoe Studio have been able to recreate the feeling they experienced upon reading Fred’s letter and how the story behind the song helped them make a connection with the sentiment and words of love, loss and sorrow felt by Fred.

Great PR is about creating a connection with your audience. Whether it is to inspire, shock, reward or challenge, a simple story can be a powerful tool.

“Oh Sweet Lorraine” is number 1 on iTunes and already covers of the song are surfacing on YouTube achieving impressive hits of almost 50,000 in just 4 days. #OhSweetLorraine is already trending on Twitter and many ‘fans’ have started to target the popular US chat show host Ellen encouraging her to feature Fred on her show. This will undoubtedly bring more attention to Fred, Lorraine and of course, Greed Shoe Studio.

A good cause. A good result. Great PR done exceptionally well. Congratulations Green Shoe Studio.

You can watch the documentary “A Letter from Fred” which includes the priceless moment at the end, when we see Fred’s response to hearing his love letter to Lorraine performed for the first time.

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