Promotions 2.0Blurring the line between interactive advertising, promotions and social network marketing.

Archive for the ‘Promotions 2.0’ Category

January 12th, 2010

Godiva goes Social with Give Love Giveaway

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.
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January 11th, 2010

Facebook Updates Promo/Sweepstakes Guidelines

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.

Continue on…

January 8th, 2010

Vitaminwater Connect is a Winner!

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.

December 21st, 2009

3 Steps to Creating Social Media Value!

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.

July 7th, 2009

Doritos does Augmented Reality

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.

Continue on…

June 10th, 2009

Promotions Make Media More Measurable

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.

Continue on…

May 11th, 2009

Dave Matthews Band Facebook Contest

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After a long break from the studio the Dave Matthews Band band traveled down to New Orleans to complete work on their new studio album, Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King, which will be be released on June 2. To promote the album the band has put together a social media promotion called DMB BIG WHISKEY AND THE GROOGRUX KING ADVANCE LISTENING PARTY CONTEST

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!

April 9th, 2009

Moving from Clicks to Conversions

For over a decade, Website publishers have relied on an old advertising model: Publishers provided advertisers access to online viewers, and the more desirable those viewers, the more online publisher charged for banner impressions. Like the early days of television this model worked (for a while), but as advertising clutter increased and consumers began to see banners as noise click-through rates have dropped to an all time low.

Marketers are now shifting their focus from a one dimensional awareness approach to  integrated marketing strategies that leverage the engagement cycle to move consumers from awareness to conversion.

Unlike the sales funnel. Engagement is better thought of as a cycle, a series of touchpoints designed to create engagement with a brand in order to drive a purchase, each time in a meaningful and valuable way to both brand and consumer.

In the world of interactive promotions the engagement cycle is driven by three primary stages: awareness, activation, and conversion (or purchase). Throughout the cycle, marketers must measure in order to add value throughout the cycle.

Continue on…

March 13th, 2009

Advertising in the Digital Age

tvThe emergence of digital media has created some very fundamental and important changes in the world of advertising. New digital technologies are creating a wide range of new possibilities for two-way communication and measurement. The power of promotions to cut through clutter and capture consumer interest and attention is also beginning to blur the line between advertising and promotional marketing strategies. These changes are  redefining the rules for advertising in the digital age. Continue on…

March 6th, 2009

5 Reasons Promotions Thrive in a Down Economy

As the economy continues to tumble, Marketers are looking for ways to squeeze more value from their budgets. Here’s what smart marketers should know:

1) Brand awareness ads lose their effectiveness. Advertising (or disruptive messaging) is mostly about generating awareness and reinforcing brands. In a recession, ordinary consumers aren’t as willing to spend. Sure, we’ll be aware of the product, but that doesn’t make much difference when you’re not spending. Advertising is also expensive and is a lot easier to cut than headcount.

2) Promotions are about engagement not awareness. Sweepstakes, Promotions & Contests are about rewarding consumers for their attention. You may resist advertising if your finances are tight, but if you have a chance to win cash or a great prize in a down economy it is more likely to get your attention.

3) Social media creates promotion buzz. Consumers are more likely to tell their friends about a great promotion than a brand. Blogs, word of mouth, social networks… are all about people connecting with other people. You may resist advertising if your finances are tight, but if your bud tells you that you could win a new car or tickets to the World Series, that’s more persuasive than advertising. Basically, in a recession, engagement is more important than awareness — and that’s where advertising flops and promotions succeed.

4) It’s less expensive. An interactive promotion campaign is typically $20K to $150K — a lot cheaper than a significant sized ad campaign. Recently we have seen significant growth in promotions paired with social media.

5) It’s measurable. Interactive promotions are highly measurable,  if it generates leads, or conversions, or buzz, or something useful — then you can prove it’s working. But you need to have a plan before you get started.