Archive of the 'Promo Trends' Category

Much to the surprise of everyone except some New York die-hards, an actual football game broke out last Sunday while viewers were trying to watch some very expensive commercials.

Budweiser

By now you’ve seen all the write-ups about which TV spots scored and which ones fumbled. Both Nielsen and USA Today’s Ad Meter anointed Budweiser’s “Rocky” takeoff as the game’s most popular ad among live viewers, while E-Trade’s barfing baby and Pepsi’s Timberlake torture scored highest with TiVo’ers.

But another way to look at the ad contest is to see who did the best job of driving viewers from those pricey $2.7 million 30-second spots to a more engaged relationship with their online sites, either. Marketers had the chance to build on the buzz a Super Bowl ad draws by creating a site or Web page that spoke specifically to their ad content, driving viewers to that Web location through their ad creative, or using search marketing to deliver pay-per-click text ads on the terms game watchers would be most likely to search online. more

Everyone can point to disappointing sequels that failed to re-capture the excitement of the original: “Fantasia 2000”. “The Two Jakes”. “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo”. When you’re creating a product for popular culture, it’s just hard to put that second bottle of lightning up on the shelf.

Apparently Office Max and the agencies behind the “Elf Yourself” viral campaign haven’t heard about the sophomore slump. The team scored a big holiday 2006 viral success with the campaign, in which users get to download their face to a spindly elfin body and then shake their groove thing for e-mail friends. So when the holiday season rolled around again in 2007, OfficeMax, ad agency Toy New York and digital content company EVB decided to up the ante to four elves per e-mail and add some showier dance moves and voice capability but essentially keep the rest of the campaign the same. more

When it comes to interactive tie-ins with live events, there are two schools of thought. You can basically fish where the fish are and link your digital content to Web sites that are already seeing traffic from the event. On the other hand, there’s a lot to be said for building your own fishing hole and controlling both the experience and the visitors.

Last year, Totino’s Pizza Rolls took a fairly sedate approach to its sponsorship of a decidedly non-sedate event: the ESPN Winter X Games for extreme sports fans, held annually in Aspen CO. The General Mills-owned brand created TV spots and print ads that drove viewers—mostly 13-to-17 year old males– to a Totino’s-branded page on the ESPN.com site. There they were able to vote on their favorite moments from the games and to enter a sweepstakes to win a Jeep patriot packed with sports gear. Totino’s also used competing pro snowboarder Danny Kass as a brand ambassador, putting a logo on his board and posting his daily blog entries on the branded page. more

What do you do if your condom company keeps coming up short in testing among the 18-to-24 year old demographic—the ones who are the most frequent users of the product? If you’re LifeStyles, you re-brand with a campaign that uses Web video and in-bar promotions to stir up some buzz and build a hipper, more personal reputation. more

Speaking of successes, it’s time once again to submit your best digital efforts for this year’s Interactive Marketing Awards. We want to recognize the most effective online marketing and promotional efforts of the last year by choosing the most outstanding entries in eight categories: promotional Web sites; viral promotions; mobile marketing; campaigns using new media like social nets or blogs; Internet sampling or couponing; Web loyalty marketing; search marketing; and e-mail-based promotions. One overall winner will be chosen from among the eight category winners. You can read the competition rules or enter a campaign online until Feb. 15, 2008, by clicking through to http://promomagazine.com/awards/iaawards. Winners will be honored at a gala during the Interactive Marketing Summit held April 30 to May 1 in Las Vegas. Submit and get the credit you deserve!

The 2008 Presidential election is shaping up to be the most networked political contest in our nation’s history. All the contenders have fairly interactive Web sites, and most have social-network profile pages too. Obama belongs to half a dozen Web interest communities. Mitt Romney and his family run several channels of online video. John Edwards’ fans can track every Iowa corn dog and New Hampshire donut their man eats by signing on to his Twitter account.

But being on the Web also means that pols’ Internet performances can be tracked, measured and compared to their counterparts in the private sector. And a couple of recent reports suggest that they could become a lot more effective by taking some tips from commercial marketers. more

Can you brand something as common as tap water? Two New York-area marketing consultants began a campaign to do just that in the latter half of last year. They’ve had so much success that what started out as a labor of love run out of their homes now threatens to turn into a full-time job.

And that’s okay for Eric Yaverbaum and Mark DiMassimo, two veterans of the New York marketing scene who decided to fight the bottled-water industry by juicing up the green appeal of the humble H20 that comes from the faucet. “We’re brand guys,” says Yaverbaum, the president of strategic PR agency Ericho Communications; DiMassimo co-founded the DIGO brand-building agency. “We’ve always worked for other people’s products. Now we’ve got a company, and we’re our own client. It makes the strategy sessions move a lot faster, that’s for sure.”

The pair started last October with a Web site, www.Tappening.com, that outlines extensive reasons why tap water is more eco-friendly than bottled water, including a smaller carbon manufacturing footprint, savings in transport costs, reduced landfill use, and the simple fact that the Environmental Protection Agency’s purity requirements for municipal water are more stringent than those the Food and Drug Administration imposes on bottled water. more

There’s not much research to suggest that people are more easily persuaded in bars or restaurants—although that would explain perennial hopes of the Cubs’ chances for a playoff berth. But there’s voluminous research to show that marketing in bars, restaurants and clubs can be effective in reaching the elusive young adult audience. These 21-to-34s tend to go out for entertainment regularly, more than once a month on average; and while they tend to TiVo mass media at home, they present an attractive target in a social setting such as a pub or night spot. more

The Internet turned 25 over the weekend. Twenty five years ago last week, Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn got a few computers in their Defense Department research agency to start talking to each other using the TCP/IP protocol. That platform, which had been in development for more than a decade, let small computer networks start talking to each other.

And they haven’t stopped. One quarter-century later, the Internet now has about 1 billion users around the world, and it’s changed everything—from education and entertainment to advertising and promotion. Many marketing campaigns now have the Web at their core; and even those that feature offline elements, such as live events or couponing/sampling programs, rely on digitally networked tools such as e-mail or mobile to spread their message virally or get users talking about the experiences.

And that’s the reason for what you’re reading now. Today we’re launching PROMO Interactive as a regular semi-monthly look at some of the most interesting stories in the wonders that the Web can do for branding products, launching new ones, building user communities and reaching fresh markets.

The Web has re-jiggered the news cycle, too, with blogs and RSS feeds. We recognize that: For years, we’ve put out a daily PROMO Xtra bulletin on breaking stories in marketing, and we’ll continue to do so. But PROMO Interactive will concentrate on looking at the stories behind the headlines, following up on campaigns to examine their metrics and inner workings, and tracing the trends that run through disparate promotions. We’ll talk to experts in their fields, offer a primer on some of the more out-there tools of the trade, and look skeptically at tactics to separate the signal from the noise.

It promises to be a fun gig. Like any 25-year-old, the Internet channel has still got a lot of growing up to do– many mistakes to make and probably a few break-out successes no one even dreams of yet. Hope you’ll join us for the ride.