Godiva Chocolatier is going social with a Valentine’s Day Facebook promotion that invites consumers to send virtual Valentines to their friends and loved ones on Facebook for a chance to win two special edition boxes of Godiva Chocolate. One to keep, and one to share. The promotion, which runs until February 14th, gives consumers a chance to win every time they send a Valentine through Facebook or Email.
The promotion and microsite created by teamDigital Promotions also features a Valentine’s Day shop and special discount offers at Godiva.com leading up to Valentine’s Day.
With the social web constantly changing teamDigital strives to stay on top of the latest techonologies and regulations. Running promotions on Facebook Pages and inside Facebook apps is one of the most effective ways of engaging Facebook users. However, Facebook recently announced significant updates to its promo/sweepstakes policies for Facebook Pages that have very practical impact for marketers on Facebook. For a deeper dive on the rule changes, see the updated promotional guidelines. But essentially, the new rules:
1. Require all marketers to get explicit permission from Facebook at least 7 days before administering any promotion inside Facebook.
2. Prohibit running any contests or promotions that require users to become a fan, interact with a feed story, or do anything else outside an application tab or canvas page in order to enter.
This means that “become a fan” contests, “status update” contests, “photo upload” contests, and any other kind of contest that requires commenting on or responding to items in the News Feed are no longer allowed. Rather, Pages must send users to a custom application tab to enter contests.
Many marketers have been experimenting with different types of contests to drive traffic and engagement on their Facebook Pages over recent months, and several promotions that seem to violate the policies have appeared lately.
Vitaminwater has selected a new flavor after soliciting fan information through Facebook, with the latest offering from the Coke beverage company appropriately called “Connect.” The new Black Cherry and Lime flavor was voted on and inspired by Facebook users. One grand prize winner responsible for the creation of the Vitamin Water Connect label design and several finalists were also named.
Vitaminwater is an extremely popular brand on Facebook, with about 1.1 million fans of its very interactive and often-updated page. The brand launched a flavor creator game in the fall of ‘09, and fans flocked to the page to take a crack at concocting the next new flavor, partially driven by extensive online and television advertising. The application was unique in that it not only used the opinions of Facebook fans, but reached out across several other sites to bring in already popular flavor combinations to inspire the new vitaminwater flavor.
The winning label announcement also hints at an early sampling of the new flavor for vitaminwater Facebook fans. It doesn’t specify if this will be a sampling distributed through Facebook like some of the campaigns we’ve seen from Splenda, Texas Pete and others, or if it will be a tasting in stores or other venues that will be revealed on the Facebook page.
Social media has become mainstream media with over 300 million users on Facebook alone and, according to Forrester Research, most of those people interact socially at least once a month. This year Marketers will spend almost $1 billion on display ads in social networks and another $750 million on social media marketing.
Thousands of brands have entered the Social Media space this year, but many marketers still struggle to create social media value. Creating value for your consumers can be broken down into these three steps.
Step 1: Be Active
Companies must establish an active presence in social media that creates value before consumers will be willing to share with others. Dunkin’ Donuts illustrates how an engaging Facebook fan page can create value for customers and connect them to the brand. The company’s page has a variety of content including contests and quizzes. It also promotes other company content on other social media sites (Twitter, YouTube), and serves as a distribution point for promotions and news about local store openings.
Step 2: Connect
To connect with consumers, brands must establish strong relationships with brand followers. This means finding ways to connect with consumers beyond simply trying to sell them something. In other words, they need to find their advocates, connect with those people who are fans of the brand and will speak favorably of it online. These connections enable companies to communicate value propositions and encourage sharing. For example, Life is Good maintains a Facebook page. The company promotes local events and virtual rewards sent among Facebook members — the clothing is not even mentioned explicitly. Sales and promotion of the company’s clothing line is left to the website and catalogue.
Step 3: Give
Online interactions with brand followers and fans need to involve two things: an opportunity to contribute and an incentive. Promotions and contests are an excellent way to engage brand followers and fans. We recently helped Godiva create a promotion for the holidays that let’s consumers send their friends on Facebook virtual gifts for a chance to win a year of Godiva chocolate. If the receiver wins, the sender also wins.
By making themselves available and engaging fans and followers online, companies can augment and improve marketing efforts significantly. Many marketers are unsure about how to enter social media marketing and fear that social media campaigns aren’t measurable. By following these steps and taking a data-driven and measured approach to social media marketing, marketers can identify, recruit and engage socially active customers and create ongoing value.
Enter for a chance to win one of five grand prize trips and up to $500 in daily travel prizes through January 31, 2010 at www.JetandDriveGiveaway.com.
NEW YORK, — JetBlue Airways, the airline known for giving customers more value for their airfare, and The Hertz Corporation, the world’s largest general use car rental brand, are pleased to announce an online “Jet & Drive Giveaway,” giving customers the chance to win one of five great trips plus one of more than 100 daily prizes in an escalating sweepstakes through January 31, 2010. The promotion is designed to engage JetBlue’s social media-friendly audience with escalating prizes that increase in value as participants share the promotion with others. As more people enter daily, the value of that day’s prize increases.
Customers can enter every day at www.JetandDriveGiveaway.com for a chance to win up to $250 in Hertz rental certificates and up to $500 JetBlue Gift Cards based on the number of daily entries received. Additionally for every 50,000 overall entries, one of five grand prize trips will be awarded, including four-day, three-night accommodations for two courtesy of a JetBlue Getaways hotel partner, roundtrip air transportation on JetBlue, and a premium car rental from Hertz. Winners can select from one of five JetBlue destinations: Aruba; New York; Los Angeles; Las Vegas; and Orlando.
To make entering online that much easier, a Jet & Drive Widget was also developed to engage consumers in the spaces and places they interact most. Site visitors can easily grab the widget, enter, and share it with friends across blogs and social networking sites. Entrants are encouraged to spread the word to help increase the daily prize values.
“For almost ten years, JetBlue has delivered more services, more amenities, and an award-winning flight experience to our customers,” said Leah Britton, analyst of business development for JetBlue Airways. “As more of our customers share their travel experiences with friends, family and colleagues, our loyalty base grows. As a way of saying thank you, we’re excited to offer them this opportunity to receive even more value from JetBlue and Hertz.”
The Giveaway also extends exclusive Hertz savings to customers booking a Jet & Drive combo on jetblue.com during the promotion period, with an additional $25 savings on future qualifying Hertz rentals (b). JetBlue and Hertz offer an everyday Jet and Drive discount of up to 20 percent off of a car rental when booking online at jetblue.com.
For a detailed description of prizes, eligibility, entry instructions, rules and information about the Giveaway, please visit www.JetandDriveGiveaway.com. Jet & Drive is designed, developed, and managed by teamDigital Promotions, Bethel, CT and administration is handled by Project Support Team, Inc.
Augmented reality seems to be everywhere these days. Now Doritos is bringing augmented reality to the world of promotions with specially marked bags of Doritos Late Night chips that can be used as a “ticket” to a 3-D concert performance by bands including blink-182 and Big Boi — all made possible by the power of augmented reality technology. The exclusive venue, www.doritoslatenight.com, is where music fans will get to see their favorite artists onstage and online in a truly one-of-kind performance.
The Doritos Late Night online concert is the first-ever augmented reality experience to showcase live-action video within a 3-D, interactive environment. The website allows Doritos Late Night special-edition bags to be used with a web cam to launch the virtual performances that pop directly out of the bag, (See video above) including two fan-favorite songs by blink-182 (”Rock Show” and “I Miss You”) and one from Big Boi (”Ringtone”). Fans can personalize each artist’s performance by the way they hold, move and shake the bag, offering up a new experience each and every time.
We all keep hearing about the challenges of measuring marketing campaigns. It’s true, tracking the overall ROI of a campaign is not entirely possible since there is a large qualitative and not quantitative aspect involved. However, by adding a promotional element we can directly track consumer interactions & engagement.
Traditional media campaigns rely on eyeballs, meaning the amount of people who actually see the ad. However, as media costs continue to rise, audiences have become more fragmented, making them harder to reach. So how do you measure the success of these massive costs? Well, you try to figure out how many people saw the ad, it’s like measuring the success of a Google AdWords campaigns strictly by impressions, not very effective, since the majority of advertising messages are ignored by consumers. Traditional media relies entirely on one way communication, with as many people as possible, but then what? As advertising clutter continues to expand consumers ignore a larger percentage of the ads they see. All we have to do is click the skip button, change the channel, or turn our heads; which in most cases is exactly what we do.
Madison Avenue is plowing more resources into a new marketing medium: AppleInc.’s iPhone.
In the past several months, companies such as Burger King Holdings Inc., Zippo Manufacturing Co. and Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. have experimented with promotional software applications that can be downloaded onto the iPhone, or they have created ads that are placed within other popular applications for the device.
At the most basic, marketers are taking advantage of the iPhone’s advanced video and screen capabilities by creating streaming video ads. But some are taking things further by offering ads disguised as apps. The latter allow users to do such things as play games or manipulate images by touching the phone’s screen.
Many marketers find “app-vertising” attractive because the iPhone’s audience has grown so quickly. The iPhone now has more than 20 million users, and more are likely to buy in because Apple is widely expected to unveil a new model in coming months. Analysts estimate that Apple’s iPod touch, which can also run downloaded apps, adds at least 15 million more users to the market. Continue Reading…
DMB fans are invited to host a listening party and create a Facebook Event page scheduled for Memorial Day weekend and invite all their friends. The top 100 hosts will win a personalized advance copy of the new album to use for the listening party. Hosts must submit an entry form on the Advance Listening Party Contest Page by May 12th.
The host of the best listening party will win a trip to meet Dave Matthews and see the band perform live from the front row at their show in West Palm Beach, FL on Saturday, August 15th!
Sony has launched a viral game for Terminator Salvation called Resistance 2018 that involves users on twitter joining various resistance squadrons in order to fight the machines.
If you want to play the viral game, first visit twitter.com/Resistance2018 and follow the twitter account. Then visit the website Resistance2018.com where you can login with your twitter password and read the instructions on how to play. The basic premise is that as a member of the human resistance, you follow out orders that are tweeted out on twitter and you gain points by doing so. The more points you get, the more opportunities you have, including the ability to join various squadrons, like John Connor’s Squadron.
There are various assignments and messages that apparently will be tweeted out by Resistance2018 with coding as follows: RA (Resistance Assignments), WM (Word Mix), TR (Trivia), PT (Partial Transmission), SW (SkyNet Warnings), and so on. In essence, it’s a mass multiplayer online viral game coordinated entirely via twitter. This is the first time any studio has ever done anything like this. The movie, which opens Memorial Day weekend looks like it is going to be the blockbuster movie of the summer. Check out the extended trailer above if you haven’t already seen it.
