Wednesday, August 18, 2010

“Mike’s Aluminum Anniversary”


Agency: Alcone Marketing Group
Client: Mike’s Hard Lemonade

Mike’s Hard Lemonade’s key selling season is between Memorial Day and Labor Day, representing approximately 60% of the brand’s annual sales. Securing early season display support with activity continuing throughout the summer is critical to Mike’s success, but difficult to attain as it competes against the larger beer brands. Alcone was charged with increasing sales and market share for 2009.

Alcone developed a sweepstakes that celebrated Mike’s 10th anniversary. Since aluminum is the gift to give on a 10th anniversary, they called the campaign “Mike’s Aluminum Anniversary” and proceeded to give away “the mother load of aluminum prizes.”

To incent purchase, entry codes were printed under bottle caps, driving consumers to mikeshard.com to enter. The prize pool consisted of 10 different aluminum/metal-based prize items, the grand prize being a shiny new Airstream Trailer; while other prizes included bicycles, laptops, coolers and tailgating items.

For retailers, Alcone created a corrugated “Mike’s Edition” Airstream Trailer display. The front and back served as scalable bookends, between which retailers could stock any amount of Mike’s merchandise. Additional POS included case cards, static clings, wobblers, table tents, coasters and banners.

To promote incremental display support, they developed the “Cooking with Aluminum Foil” program and partnered with Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs & Stubb’s BBQ Sauce for items that could be place on or wrapped in foil and fired up on a grill. A near-pack booklet provided recipes and coupons.

The anniversary promotion led Mike’s to its best sales summer in company history, with sales up 12%. More than 780,000 consumers entered the sweepstakes, surpassing Mike’s previous best by 55%. 

“Con Kleenex Expresa Tu Hispanidad” Art Contest



Agency: MASS Hispanic
Client: Kimberly-Clark: KLEENEX Brand

Kleenex wanted to increase its relevance among Hispanics and build a better connection with them. The agency created the “Con Kleenex® Expresa Tu Hispanidad” (Express Your Hispanic Pride With Kleenex®).

Prior to Hispanic Heritage month, the campaign invited Hispanic consumers to express their traditions and cultural pride through an art contest, with winning artists’ expressions published on Kleenex tissue cartons commemorating Hispanic heritage. This was a strong tie-in to Hispanic tastes, as twice as many Hispanics as non-Hispanics base choice on package color and design. 

Con Kleenex

The contest called on Hispanic artists to submit an original design expressing their Latino pride. Three winners received $5,000 and had their artwork appear on a boutique-sized Kleenex tissue carton during Hispanic Heritage Month. Nine runner-ups received $500.

A number of formal and grassroots tactics were leveraged, including partnerships with Hispanic museums and radio stations in Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, New York and Chicago; grassroots appeal to more than 220 college art departments, art schools, art museums, and cultural centers; engagement of online communities; Spanish-language publications; and PR.

World-renowned artist Xavier Cortada helped Kleenex select 12 finalists whose work was posted on the contest website; from there, consumers voted for their three favorite designs. The winners were introduced to the press during a national media tour.
Eighteen key retail accounts participated, including Walmart, Target and Kroger. Entries outnumbered the goal by 12 times. Sales lifted 476% during the event period vs. the previous four weeks. More than 30,000 consumers voted online; major media, including People en Español and Cosmopolitan en Español covered the promotion. HispanicTrending.com gave Kleenex a plug for their innovative use of Facebook to reach Spanish speakers.  

Ford & White Collar-’Chasing the Shadow’


Agency: Team Detroit
Client: Ford Motor Company
  

Ford Motor Company partnered with USA Network in 2009 on the new television series, White Collar. The partnership extended across multiple media platforms, including a commercial premiere, a :60 first break, vignettes and integration of the Ford Taurus Limited into the series.

Ford also extended the brand partnership through a game called ‘White Collar: Chasing the Shadow’. The game offered fans the opportunity to help main characters Peter and Neal solve a new White Collar crime each week and enter for a chance to win an all new Ford Taurus Limited at the game’s completion.

Chasing the Shadow featured first-person game play, live action HD video and immersive flash gaming challenges, while utilizing the Ford Taurus to track down a criminal mastermind.

Over seven weeks, the game introduced new features and techniques to entice viewers to come back and play over and over with different experiences. Each weekly task required piecing together clues and calling cards to solve the challenge with the end goal of identifying the White Shadow. The Ford Taurus Limited played a key role in the player’s experience throughout the game.

Players who completed each weekly challenge were entered to win a mission prize package, including Neil’s “gentleman’s bag,” complete with everything needed to become a White Collar character themselves. Players who completed all seven challenges were entered to win the ultimate Grand Prize, an all-new 2010 Ford Taurus Limited.

The campaign was promoted through online media, search, social media and on usanetwork.com. Online media included co-branded displays, branded rails, White Collar pages, and a branded URL, chasingtheshadow.usanetwork.com. Additional messaging was placed in e-newsletters, homepage promos, weekly e-blasts and logo inclusion on the show’s homepage.

The campaign generated an average of 18,941 weekly visits, with 70.3 page views per visit, or 14 million page views. A total of 60.8% of all registered users entered the sweepstakes.

“Dude, Where’s my Bar?”


Agency: Threshold Interactive
Client: Nestle


Bart Simpson was known for his famous tagline, “Nobody better lay a finger on my Butterfinger.” But after the Bart Simpson era waned, so too did the brand’s strength. Competitors were outselling Butterfinger 10 to 1. The brand was flat and losing share.

So in 2009, Nestle Butterfinger reintroduced the well-known tagline, sans Simpson. The Butterfinger audience is a contest-driven crowd. Given that, and the fact that Threshold had a limited budget to work with, they created an alternate reality game (ARG) to get consumers involved. With new spokesperson Seth Green, they created a real life story of Green’s missing Butterfinger and engaged consumers to find it.

The narrative thread was told through 14 original videos, a seeding strategy for mass market press, celebrity gossip sites, entertainment media, the ARG community, two websites: DudeWheresMyBar.com and ItsMyButterfingerNow.com, social and rich media plans, as well as six different games and puzzles that unrolled over a three-week period starting on October 13, 2009 and ending with a big reveal on Halloween.

The “Dude, Where’s My Bar?” ARG was designed with three parts. The first was an introduction of Green as the new spokesperson; the second included two video tapes, the first one of a rant Green went on when he walked off the set of a movie; the second one of Green out in the parking lot cooling off when he is attacked and his vintage Butterfinger bar that his grandfather gave him and that at one time belonged to Simpson himself, is stolen.

In the third phase, Green makes a public service announcement asking consumers to help him find his stolen vintage Butterfinger bar using the ARG at dudewheresmybar.com. A ransom note is seeded to the press from his evil twin brother posing the threat of destroying the bar if the ransom isn’t paid by midnight on Halloween.

Retail was integrated into the storyline when Green’s brother released 100,000 free vintage style Butterfinger bars to Circle K.

A a result of the new campaign, Butterfinger increased share 5%, while dollar growth increased 10%. The campaign earned over 160 million media impressions, more than six times the goal.