Archive of the 'Promo Trends' Category

For sports fans, getting a chance to spout off in the spotlight can be as valuable as any cash prize. And rubbing elbows with actual players or sports pros can turn a local supporter into a brand evangelist faster than you can say, “The Cubs win the pennant.” (Go ahead, say it.)

Two sports-based promotions this fall are offering to give fans that megaphone moment in exchange for user-generated content (UGC) uploaded to a Web site. more

Interactive TV commercials? They’ve been tried several times, beginning with the QUBE cable TV experiment by Warner Cable in Columbus OH back in 1977. That one invented pay-per-view programming, special interest cable channels MTV and Nickelodeon, and oh yes, infomercials.

A new deal between TiVo and Amazon.com wants to push the envelope in combining marketing and TV viewing. Product Purchase, as it’s being called, will let users of the latest versions of TiVo’s recording device use their remote controls to link directly to Amazon.com, learn more about the item they’re seeing in a program, and buy it directly, without turning away from the TV screen. more

McDonald’s “Big Mac Chant Off”, a user-generated content competition looking for the best user performance of the classic “Two all-beef patties” jingle, has found its winner and put his rap into a national TV spot, as promised. But one of the runner-up entrants got his moment in the spotlight too: for having held up a McDonald’s back in 1994. more

Almost half the brands that spend money and resources on search marketing fail to connect those campaigns to their offline marketing efforts, according to research made public this month by search marketing firm iProspect. more

In one of the more innovative online game promotions to come down the broadband pipe, Facebook players in June were offered a peek inside a mysterious box that, they were promised, would change their lives.

Really. It said so right in the URL: www.LifeChangingBox.com. more

The questions persist about this summer’s Yahoo! cliffhanger. What will the distant also-ran search engine do to boost both its search share and its earnings price? Will co-founder Jerry Yang be able to re-energize the company and stop the brain drain? Will Microsoft circle back for Buyout Offer: The Return? And whether or not any of those things happen, what difference will it all make for marketers?

The first group of questions is still open, but some industry experts have weighed in with educated, data-based opinion on a specific issue: namely, the search ad deal between Yahoo! and Google that has come to be known as “Yahoogle”. more

Electronics maker Samsung is promoting the video capabilities of its new Instinct mobile phone with a set of ballpark Webisodes designed specifically to be seen over the handset.

Launched on July 16, the three programs give behind-the-scenes glimpses of three famous Major League Baseball stadiums: Boston’s Fenway Park, Chicago’s Wrigley Field and San Francisco’s AT&T Park. The first Webisode features the San Francisco park. more

Jones Soda

Sometimes you just have to float an interesting idea out there and worry later about whether it’s good for the bottom line.

That’s the thinking behind a new Web site for Jones Soda, the alt-beverage company that has made its reputation on pure cane sugar, offbeat flavors like Blue Bubble Gum and Fufu Berry, and a staunch nonconformism. more

This summer seems to be offering highly anticipated blockbuster events for every taste. If you’re a comic-book fan, there’s the new Batman movie. If you’ve been waiting since 1991 for new music from Guns N’ Roses, we learn that a track from a long-delayed album will be on the “Rock Band 2” video game. And if you’re a gadget geek, you were standing in line on July 15 for first crack at the new Apple iPhone 3G, cheaper, faster and maybe more Web-enabled than its original touch-screen counterpart.

But fans of the iPhone, and other smartphones able to access the Web, are growing less geeky and more mainstream all the time, and marketers who are waiting for the mobile Internet to go big should stop waiting. Those are the key takeaways of a new report compiled by Nielsen Mobile from diverse research sources within the company, giving new hope to marketers who would like to start pushing content and brand messaging to users who aren’t at their laptop or home PC. more

If you’re looking for a demographic that needs reliable answers fast to tough questions, and doesn’t necessarily mind if they come equipped with some trustworthy product recommendations, then you could do a lot worse than to cater to parents, particularly new ones.

And that’s the thinking behind the new social community that has been layered on long-standing parenting content site BabyCenter.com, which has been around since before social networks existed on the Web. more