Interview on Blogspot Radio

I recently shared some thoughts on marketing and promotions with Stuart Crawford of Ulistic Orange Files.

If you agree to the comments, let me know. Or share your experience on what is needed to make promotions stickier.

CF Marketing sources and delivers unique, innovative promotion solutions that will ensure your next marketing promotion is memorable and interactive. Just as important, you will be able to measure the results generated from your investment.  We specialize in delivering sports, auto and retail contests and promotions. Contact me at 403.452.2699 or email me to discuss your upcoming sponsorship event, game day contests, trade show promotion or direct response campaign. 

Clever Sports and Auto Cross Promotion

Just ran across a clever cross promotion idea for an English football (soccer) team.   Anyone driving an Audi can apply to have a FREE parking spot at any game during the current season.  The article doesn't say if this promotion is sponsored by Audi or a local dealer but it is a brilliant activation strategy for the sponsor.

Assuming the fan profile closely aligns with the Audi owner profile, it provides great profile for Audi, provides a high perceived value for the fan and offers a great way to cross promote both parties throughout the season.

This type of promotion offers real value to the sponsor as they get more than simple name recognition at the game.  Among the Audi owners, there will be a willingness to promote this among friends through social media including Facebook or Twitter.  For Audi, this will help solidify the relationship with customers and reinforce positive opinions about the brand.

It is likely many sports franchises don't have surplus capacity to offer free parking. There are other ways to execute this idea that still offer opportunities to add value to their sponsorship packages.  These might be free shuttle service to and from game from an offsite parking area, exclusive seating area in arena or stadium, or exclusive pre or post game networking event with members of the team and sponsors.

This type of promotion is really well suited for product or service brands which customers already have a strong affinity to.  It is more likely to be of value where there is an existing core of customers that "love" the product (e.g. Saturn owners would have been a great target) but is exclusive enough to offer value to the sponsor (Jeep owners, Volkswagen Jetta owners, etc).

This example clearly highlights the opportunity to stand out and offer sponsors something different.  I'd be interested in hearing of other creative sports sponsorship ideas you have deployed or have run across. 

The Importance of Aspiration in a Promotion or Contest

There are lots of reasons to run a contest or sales promotion - increase brand exposure, create customer database, test market new product, encourage trial, or drive web/store traffic.  Whatever the objective, a key element of a successful promotion is offering something of high perceived value to consumer.  This can be cash, trips, merchandise, or unusual experience.

The Honey Nut Cheerios is a great example of a contest totally missing this aspirational component. Win a year supply of cereal doesn't inspire or motivate.  What's worse, the prize is actually only one box of cereal per month - a total value under $100. 

This example really looks like the idea was generated in the boardroom without any consideration of the customer.  What would motivate them to participate?  How can we stand out?  What is the return on promotion we want to achieve?

It also appears to have been developed with an eye to minimizing cost rather than maximizing results.

The impact of real world experience on social media campaigns

I know, you probably have heard enough about the Old Spice viral marketing campaign. It has consumed the marketing world and is all over the internet with over 100 videos touting the advantages of this old brand.
CR562PVEQHFSThe results to date have been quite underwhelming.  Sales have dropped by about 7% since the campaign's inception despite the unbelievable amount of exposure in all forms of social media and traditional media sources.

I won't try to analyze the campaign or identify the reasons for the failure to generate increased sales (this had to be the primary goal).  I'll leave this up to others.  But the campaign does highlight a few misconceptions about the ability of social media to convert awareness into sales success.

While working with clients and in discussions with other professionals, it is clear there is a growing belief that "owning" social media (Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, etc)  is a sufficient strategy for generating increased sales.  But as the Old Spice campaign highlights, it isn't enough.  There still needs to be a real world component - instore couponing, product trial program, purchase incentives that build on the exposure provided by the online communication.

This is especially true for a tangible product and old brand like Old Spice. It has name recognition but also lots of baggage - grandpa's after shave lotion, your dad's brand,or what you buy when you can't think of anything else.  Not exactly inspiring.

Along with the super awareness of generated, a key piece of the strategy has to be to get it into the consumer's hands.  Let him experience it first hand through samples distributed by direct mail, instore sampling, and trial offers.  This allows her to provide approval or reject the notion of the campaign.

And until an alternative delivery vehicle is discovered, this has to happen in the real world, not the virtual world. 




                                                                                                                            

Preventing your contest from turning into a PR nightmare

In most North American jurisdictions, there are well established rules and regulations promotional contests must abide by. Most common of these include clearly stating the odds of winning, the process for selecting winners, detailed prize descriptions and publishing of winners names. 

If you have run a contest, you are probably very familiar with these. If you haven't, do some homework or contact a promotional consultant or agency to help you through the process.  Not following the rules can lead to hefty fines and some bad press.

But what about terms and conditions of the contest.  How should these be handled?

From my experience, this is often a tricky part of the promotion. Restrictions or details of the promotion  are often added by others outside the marketing department and at the last minute.  For example, Finance will add restrictions to limit financial exposure, the legal department will want wording restrictions and senior management will provide advice on large contests.  Frequently what seemed like a very simple concept begins to resemble the preverbial horse designed by a committee. It turns out to be a zebra. 

So what? Why should this be a concern?

These additional terms or restrictions often add complexity to a contest. And can, on occasion, backfire turning positive results into a negative experience for the consumer. and can create a PR nightmare for the company..

The Toshiba World Cup promotion is a good example.  In several European countries with teams competing at the World Cup, Toshiba ran a promotion offering to refund the purchase price for selected televisions and laptops if the home team won the World Cup.  Great idea as it builds on the excitement and hype around the World Cup.  And the contest stimulated increased sales.

Somewhere along the way, someone decided it was a good idea to add a deadline of June 17th to register the purchase eligible for refund. This was one week into the tournament but before all teams had actually played.

The problem? This restriction was not clearly publicized at point of sale. Apparently even on the contest website, this restriction was buried. 

The result?

When Spanish purchasers tried to apply for their refund, they were refused as many registered after the cutoff date.  And Toshiba has steadfastly refused to honour the refund requests even though it is clear the cutoff date was insufficiently publicized.

In Spain, the backlash against Toshiba has turned a positive promotion into a PR nightmare. The damage isn't contained to the Spanish market. Through social media channels, this story has been carried worldwide and forced Toshiba to dedicate time and resources to counter the negative press. It is likely, Toshiba's brand has been negatively impacted, at least for the short term.  What a wasted opportunity over a seemingly small detail!

It is prudent and good business policy to add terms or conditions to a contest or promotion that limit financial exposure.  But they need to be thought through carefully to ensure complexity isn't added or the attractiveness of the promotion diminished.  Don't hide behind the conditions or use them to prevent awarding prizes or incentives.  More importantly, if they are important enough to be added, make the effort to ensure consumers are made of aware of those that impact eligibility.

The problem with the Toshiba promotion wasn't that they had established a deadline for registering a purchase. Rather it was that it was hidden from the consumer and then used to justify not providing the refund.  This approach antagonizes consumers which can quickly turn a positive promotion into a PR nightmare. 

The Myth of Just Being There

I was reviewing the benefits of using the snapNwin contest card with a prospective client for an upcoming instore contest.  One of the important features of the product is it gets noticed.  I was taken aback with the following comment - "we don't need the card to be noticed as they are being handed out by the staff".

This comment surprised me as a key foundation of creating a promotion with stickiness is getting noticed and capturing the attention of customers longer to engage them in the contest.  We have a simple rule - customers need to be engaged for at least 3 seconds otherwise they will throw the contest piece away or ignore it all together.

So why would an experienced marketing professional make this comment?  From my perspective they have bought in to the myth that just by being there (ie. in the store and handed a game card), customers will take the time to look at the card, scratch it off and then follow the directions to enter the PIN code on the client's website.

Our belief is different.  Being there isn't enough. With the thousands of commercial messages bombarding consumers every day, dozens of games, contests, discount offers they encounter and other distractions like text messaging, Twitter, Facebook and other social media, contests and promotions need to work even harder to get noticed.

Getting noticed isn't easy and requires more creativity and unique ways to break through the clutter to get noticed and engage the consumer. The longer you can capture their curiosity and interact with your contest device, the higher the participation rate will be.

Viral Video Can Really Add Stickiness

                                         Taking a little diversion from my regular posts to share some very clever viral videos from Toyota.  The Swagger Wagon is great as it takes on the negative perception mini-vans have. Really funny if you have had or still drive one.

Share any other viral videos you find that other auto manufacturers are posting.