Donna's Promo Talk - Promotional Marketing that Creates Excitement and Gets Results

Back to Day 1 of PMA Conference: Robert Stephens Tells Us About the Remarkable Geek Squad

In looking back at the PMA Annual Conference and in talking to people that were there, everyone seems to be in agreement that it was a great event. The only complaint that I've heard is the fact that there was a so much content in just two days for which I can personally say I'm still trying to catch up this week from last week's overload. But of course it's better to have too much good content than not enough.

What everyone also appears to agree on is that Robert Stephens , CEO of the Geek Squad, was by far our most entertaining and "real" speaker. As our second speaker of Day 1 he made us laugh from the start as he told us he was here to tell us some stories which "I'm going to make this shit up as I go along."

Which it appeared that he did and proceeded to tell us his life story...how he started out being a Geek and showed us a photo of the "jock" in high school that he would help copy computer games for. He reminded us all of the early days of technology and shared with us that he "had a family album of all my modems".

Robert kept bringing up the comparison of his business to that of a plumber - "Why hasn't anyone nationalized a plumbing service?" Everyone needs it, but it's hard to copy that required personal service and expertise. But that's exactly what he did with the Geek Squad. He went from being that one person geek working mostly on hardware in a room full of computer parts to a 24-hour computer support task force that's over 12,000 agents strong throughout the U.S. and Canada.

His story continued on telling us that by not having money when he started the business it made him have to be more creative. He confessed that the Geek Squad logo he copied from the original gas station logos. Next was the origins of the car which his first one resembled the "Bat Mobile" and the next one being a '64 Ford Falcon. (My first car was a '64 Falcon station wagon that my parents game me with wood paneling  so I could really relate to Robert by this time). He said he would drive around town in this one car and hang out in front of the TV stations in Chicago so that he would end up appearing in the background of the newscasts. People would comment that they saw his car all around town! Finally black VW Beetles were used to become the B&W GeekMobiles of today.

Then of course came the famous Geek Squad Agent uniforms. Robert got his original idea from the  movie "Apollo 13" in which all the NASA geeks were wearing plain white short-sleeved shirts and skinny black ties. He added the Geek Squad logo to the tie as well as the badges which are the "Agents" Id's. The black belt is pretty much there "to hold up the agent's black pants". They appear to resemble Joe Friday of "Dragnet" as well, although he didn't admit to that.

2002 is when he partnered with Best Buy (or as he kidded when they "acquired" Best Buy). This is when they started rolling out the "Orange box inside the Blue Box" throughout Best Buy locations.

So, what's the moral of his story? He's got a few:

"Was Google a threat to Microsoft or the best thing that happened to them?" As consumers get more  and more comfortable with technology it will be good for businesses. It's not a linear thing." 

"People are famous sooner or later. If you peaked in high school, then I really feel sorry for you now."

"Be a hero, be humble, be yourself"

Now Robert I really hope you can find that photo you mentioned of the 700 black VW's coming off the super tanker and send it to me so I can post it here. Thanks so much for your story!

For those of you that haven't met Robert check him out in some of the Geek Squad TV commercials here and click on TV/Radio spots.

 

Missing Birds Take Super Reggie Award

The Reggie Awards are given out anually by PMA to the top promotional marketing campaigns of the year. They were presented last Thursday evening at the end of PMA's 2-Day Annual Conference during a fun and entertainining event held in the Crystal Ballroom of the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Chicago.

I looked up the history of the Reggie's on the PMA website and found this explaination of their name - "The Reggie - is derived from "cash register." It was chosen because "nothing happens until a sale is made." I thought in keeping with the theme of the Conference, "This Changes Everything", perhaps we should consider changing  the name of these awards so that they're more current with the growth of online sales. We still use "shopping carts" online, but not registers.

Anyway, I was thrilled with the judges final choice for this year's Super Reggie winner, St. Louis radio station KTRS "Missing Birds" campagin which was created by The Schupp Company. I had the honor to be one of the first round judges this year and this campaign was in the category that I judged - "Local/Regional Market  Promotion Under $1,000,000". It was one of my favorite which I had given high scores to.

I found some similarities with the "Missing Birds" and the "Wild Wooly" campaign, the winner of a local ADDY Best Of show award that I wrote about in a post a couple of weeks ago. They both show how the use of great creative combined with the buzz of social media can build a brand and connect with the targeted audience. Here's what the Missing Birds did:

KTRS was about to announce that they had become the Official Radio Station of the St. Louis Cardinals ending a 52 year relationship with a local competitive station. KTRS wanted to promote this in a big way and create a buzz in the community, but on a small budget.

They focused on an outdoor billboard campaign that featured six outdoor locations each with two boards in sequential order. The lead board was just a generic Cardinals message that gave ticket info and the following board promoted KTRS. For 10 days the boards remained up with little-to-no attention.

Then the lead Cardinals board was altered on all six locations to look as if it had been “vandalized” and the Cardinal Birds had literally been ripped off of the board. For four days, the “stolen” birds popped up all around town and on the internet but remained missing. This caused a media controversy that resulted in lead stories on every St. Louis TV and radio station, as well as in the major newspaper. To increase the buzz factor, KTRS incorporated online social networks such as MySpace.com, eBay, blogs, forums while offline they had stagings of random bird sightings throughout the city to further fuel the chatter.

Finally, the “stolen” Cardinals “re-appeared” affixed to the KTRS board with a new spray painted  “graffiti” message communicating that the “Cardinals have moved”. The campaign created enourmous buzz around St. Louis for a few weeks. It generated over milions of impressions since it was covered by all the local media...TV, radio, newspaper and online.

KTRS did indeed meet their objective which was getting everyone in St. Louis to know that they were now the new home of the St. Louis Cardinals. They quickly grew from the 19th overall station in the market to the 5th. The St. Louis Cardinals also benefited. Three weeks after the promotion, they had to stop selling 2006 season tickets for the first time ever. Of course, it also helps when you are the current World Series Champions.

Also, there were Gold, Silver and Bronze Reggie's awarded in all of the 14 categories. You can see a complete list of the winners posted on Promo Magazine's Website. You can see a detailed description of all the finalists at PMA Reggies Awards webiste as well.

So, congratualtions to all this year's winners. If any of you have some ideas for new names for the "Reggie's" please pass them on and I will submit them to possibly be considered for next year's awards.

PMA Conference Day 2: Marketers Need to Give Up the Old Model

Day two of the PMA "This Changes Everything" Conference ended today with Don Schultz, Ph.D., from Northwestern University shaking up the room telling us we all need to "Give up the old model and embrace the new one."

Some great presentations focusing along the lines of changes in our industry were presented to roughly 500 attendees over the last two days at the Hyatt Regency in Chicago. I wrote last night about our opening speaker, Jonah Bloom of Ad Age, so I thought it appropriate to write next about our last presenter. I promise to then go back and cover some of the highlights we experienced in between the two.

Don was supposed to talk about the "Crystal Ball" which he says doesn't exist anymore. They're all made of Lexan, not crystal. Instead it was titled "The Future of "Whatever it is We Do." The PMA yesterday told us that their new mission statement was "To be the recognized voice for Integrated Marketing Solutions" even though their name is "Promotional". Then this morning Howard Draft from Draft FCB told us to kill the word"Integration". While other presenters over the two days showed examples of "Integrated" marketing campaigns. So, what's up here?

Don first gave us a review of what marketing has been all about  since the model was created in 1961. It's been very simple and has consisted of 3 basic elements: Audience, Content, Delivery. It's been a very "Controlled" system. Us marketers get insight on the audience, create insight and then send the message out and the "audience" is supposed to respond. Right? That's what we've been taught. If we get the right message to the right audience in the right way people will respond.

So we push, shove it out to them whether they want it or not. We create the stimulus and expect a response, to change their behavior in some way. What we do is very interruptive. We just talk, and usually we talk when somebody gives us a budget to do it with.

This is the old model, the way its always been done. But it's a model designed for marketers, not customers. Customers don't want to be "done to" anymore.

He made a point at this time asking us in the audience to try and remember the many ads that we saw during the Super Bowl now that it's over 45 days ago. Three and four ads were the answers with Dorito's being still top of mind...the $12.95 consumer created ad.

So Don tells us the model is broken and doesn't work anymore. The customers are saying "You can't get me, I don't need to listen to you marketers anymore" and they aren't. Today they can get the information they want, when they want, how they want. So it's now a "Customer Controlled Communication System. Today customers aggregate media."

Customers today are "polychronic", performing tasks in a parallel process therefore giving us their continuous partial attention. Simultaneous media usage is now the norm and the traditional marketing lines are blurred. The audience is "The King"and it really doesn't matter how good us marketers are at any of these things that we do. 

So, what do we do? Don says he really doesn't have a clue, but he did give us a few rules to follow:

1. Traditional audience research needs to change. We need it based on consumer behaviors that are gathered and reported quickly.Tomorrow social networks may be our best source for this research.
2. Media may become the most important variable. Customers aren't looking for us. It isn't how many messages are sent, it's how many are consumed. Getting into the customer's social network is the challenge.
3. It isn't the "Big Idea" (apologies to the creatives in our biz). It will be the most effective idea. Social Networks enable "Spaghetti Creative"...develop many ideas ,toss them into the social networks and see what sticks. 
4. It's not what delivery vehicles we use, it's how they work in combination...SYNERGY is the key.

Today, specialization is "Evil". We need to get rid of the functional silos. This means massive retraining for everyone in the "new marketplace". We may not want to give up the old model, cause we've been comfortable with it for a long time. However, we need to now embrace this new model which must be:

• Integrated and Interactive
• Internal and External
• Dialog and Sharing

So Don ended with saying we need to create "shared value", a new concept for most marketers. We need to still focus on the 3 basic elements, but it's "more of how we mix and match them to create overall synergy".

So, is SYNERGY now the okay word for us to use in place of "Integration"? We'll have to see.

Jonah Bloom from Ad Age Sets the Stage For PMA Conference

PMA's Annual Conference was under way this morning with a a promise to help us define how to successfully and not successfully address change, how to leverage it and how to make it work for us. With David Bowie's "Changes" broadcasting through the room's speakers we were inspired with a slide show of people and products that defined changes throughout our history. We were then greeted by Michael Murphy, Chairman of the Board for PMA and Director of Consumer Integrated Marketing for Johnson & Johnson, who reminded us of the recent changes we've seen in our marketplace from the consumer generated Dorito's Super Bowl TV ad to the Dove Real Beauty Campaign.

It was quite a very long day which started at 7:30 am at the Breakfast Round Table I hosted on Blogging with my partner from WME Blogs, Greg Bell, to the welcome reception that began at 6:30 pm. It was still going on at 8pm when I left so that I could catch up on my email and create a blog post about today. All the speakers tied back into the overall theme of "This Changes Everything" with PMA inviting us all to "Be part of the change and come join us."

Jonah Bloom, Editor for Ad Age got us started off explaining that he was originally invited to come talk about why they picked the Agency of the Year as "The Consumer". Focusing his discussion on this topic would hopefully address the changes affecting our industry today and "why agencies were beaten by the Joe Schmo's off the street". Ad Age originally intended to give the award to Draft FCB for their bold step in redefining the agency (which we'll hear from tomorrow morning). He continued sarcastically to say how their new business model was justified when they won the Wal-Mart account, but quickly taken away because Wal-Mart didn't want to go this way. So Ad Age also rethought their decision and gave the award instead to the "technology-empowered super consumer" instead.

He further quoted Thomas Friedman in saying consumers today are "flattening the world". First a couple of negative examples such as "If you have rats running around your restaurant, they can video this and globally show it around the world on the Internet." Another was about an irate older woman who couldn't get her cell phone out of the plastic package and broadcast this through a blog that caused the cell phone retailer to accommodate the problem by supplying employees with scissors.

The Diet Coke and Mentos video went viral really, really fast and 120 million people saw the Belaggio inspired fountain. Coke brand managers at first saw this as negative and didn't embrace it, but Mentos eventually did. We had an actual Mentos/Coke demo later in the morning during a further discussion on viral marketing.

From an Ad Age interview, Jonah quoted Nick Law, EVP, Chief Creative Officer, North America R/GA who said "For years, there's been a given mentality.... clients came because agencies created the magic behind the screen. The new environment has blown open the idea of being an expert so you can be very good and working in a bedroom in Dundee and the world can be seeing your work." Jonah still doubted that if you were really good you wouldn't working out of a bedroom in Dundee, but we get the point.

Further he commented on the fact that Ad Age actually made the decision to chose "The Consumer" as the agency of the year before Time Magazine came out with their "Person of the Year: You". Ad Age just put "the consumer up against an agency, not a world dictator".

We must now work "Outside In" which means getting the messages from the outside and bringing them into the organization.

• Microsoft Vista worked with over 500,000 testers before launching their new product.
• Toyota, by listening to blogs and social networks, learned that the Tundra was not considered to be made by an authentic truck manufacturer and had to change the perceptions about Toyota to truckers.
• Ford monitored consumer impressions of the "Edge" on blogs and received so many positive comments that they've decided to include consumer generated media in their future campaigns.

Dian Hessan, President-CEO of Communispace told Ad Age "What consumers are screaming for is the desire to help companies make decisions and not just ads". They want more today...to be directly involved.

Mark Hans-Richer, Director of Marketing for Pontiac " has a really interesting perspective. "Consumers today are almost omniscient. You might call them Santa Claus consumers, you know, they see you when you're sleeping, they know when you're awake. They definitely know if you're good or bad. But do things right and they'll bring you really great presents."

Jonah closed by mentioning that there are many different blogs that cover marketing and media today, this one being one of them. "News is becoming a commodity and Ad Age is no longer my property".

So, he nicely set the stage for the rest of the day, especially for our next speaker, Stephen Roberts, CEO from the Geek Squad which will definitely be one of my next blogs, and gave me great pleasure in feeling that I'm actively participating and embracing the changes facing us today. So, do you feel you're on board yet?

Arrived in Chicago

Well I arrived in downtown Chicago today for PMA’s Annual Conference that starts tomorrow morning. I have to be ready at 7:30 am to host the Blog “Expert” table along with the other “Experts” who will all be in the registration area by the Regency Ballroom where a continental breakfast will be served.

We’re at the Hyatt Regency right on Wacker Drive, so since I had to come in early I thought I’d allow some time to get down to the famous Michigan Ave. and do a little shopping. Why not? The last time I was here was in early December when I attended PMA’s Promotional Law Conference. I had planned some holiday shopping time for that trip, so I visited some of my favorite stores again this time around. Found a few good sales, but no big promotions such as you see during the holiday season.

I’m really looking forward to the Conference and will try to absorb as much of it as possible so that I can post some good info here. I’m also looking forward to meeting some new people, other fellow bloggers perhaps, as well as some friends in the business that I haven’t seen in awhile. It’s been a couple of years since I’ve been to this particular conference, so I’m interested to see the attendance and if brands and agencies are both sending their teams.

So please look for me at breakfast each morning at the Blog “Expert” table as well as I’ll be walking around during the networking breaks. I would like to be able to get different perspectives from attendees on how they think the conference is going. So, please join the “This Changes Everything” conversation.

PMA's This Changes Everything

I'm very excited about my trip next week to Chicago to attend PMA's Annual  Conference. It will sort of be my coming out for Donna's Promo Talk. I will be sponsoring the "Breakfast with the Experts" table each morning discussing Blogs with attendees over coffee. My Blog Team partner from WME Blogs will be joining me who is really more the "Expert" at blogging then I am. I'll be sharing with you all our observations about the conference from this blog and hope to do pass on insights from attendees as well as speakers. So, please join the conversation.

"This Changes Everything" is this year's Conference theme which is really so fitting because not only does it talk to how our industry in general is changing, but also about how much PMA is changing. I'll get back to that in a minute. There is so much great content on the agenda that I'll never be able to cover it all, but I'll try to hit the big topics. Of course, they've saved the best for last with Don Shultz from Northwestern University sharing with us his "Crystal Ball". How many times have we all said "If I had a Crystal Ball.....". If we did, we wouldn't need to be at this conference..instead possibly on a beach somewhere drinking a fruity cocktail.

Back to reality, another topic that is dear to my heart, (and which my first 2 posts in this blog were on) is the Dove Real Beauty Campaign. Maureen Shirreff from Ogilvy & Mather will be sharing a case history with us which is sure to go down in history as a campaign that "Changed Everything."

Wrapping up the Conference will be the Reggie Awards where we'll all get to see the best of the best and give our winners a big congrats. I'm especially interested to see who wins this year since I had the honor to be a Reggie Judge for the first time. I only covered two categories and out of those they were so many great campaigns it was hard to score one over the over. However, there are those that just stand out from the crowd for just being a bit different and really resonating with the target audience (the basic principals of promotional marketing never really change).

Now, a few words about PMA. As we know they are a member-based organization that exists to serve us, their members. This annual Conference is one of the many great events they put on and this year's appears to top the years before. PMA is looking for our feedback on what we think of their services and what we want more of as they work to deliver the best value for our investment. We'll hear from them in the opening announcements come Wednesday morning as they share with us their vision for the industry as well as the organization now headed up under new interim president, Bonnie Carlson.  So, let me know what you'd like to see from them and I'll pass it on.

Look forward to meeting many of you next week. Please look for me and let me know what you think about all the "changes".

Go Wild For Knitting with Wild Wooly

Last night I attended the local Addy Awards put on by the RAF (Rochester Advertising Federation), one of the many clubs affiliated with the AAF. I hadn't been to the annual awards ceremony in a couple of years and thought it was time to reconnect with some of the people in the local ad community, especially since I was previously on the RAF board for 8 years as well as a past president. I also just wanted to have some fun.

Well I have to share with you the entry that won the Best of Show... Go Wild For Knitting which includes the funny blogged adventures of the Wild Woolies. Who would of thought that a ball of yarn would win over big brands such as Kodak, Bausch & Lomb, Wegmans, Constellation Brands and Xerox!

Well, it did and it just goes to show how social media combined with great creative can build a brand and connect with an audience very quickly. The campaign allows you to follow the Wild Woolies as they make their way across the country and invites you to locate them, pass them on, add your comments and share what you've done with your ball of yarn. All from a little shop in Rochester, NY called Wild Wools owned by Lucinda Snyder.

One of this year's Addy judges, Jane Murray, Associate Creative Director at Ogilvy & Mather in Toronto said about the entry "The fact the campaign was so quickly embraced, adopted, loved and propagated by the people it was intended for, told us that Wild Wooly was our hands-down winner".

I recently read an article on the Click Z Network By Rebecca Lieb "Why is a Website Like a Women", which she summarizes the book "Marketing in the In-Between: A Post-Modern Turn on Madison Avenue" by Len Ellis, who was Wunderman's EVP of Global Strategy. Lieb goes on to quote "Why is a Web site like a woman? Both want you to talk to them. This is a strong listening metaphor and a powerful argument as to why businesses would do better to invest in inbound, rather than outbound, marketing...such as why big agencies are so slowly and inadequately rising to meet interactive challenges."

I salute the women creative team that created the Wild Woolies campaign and who definitely rose above the interactive creative challenge, while both not being from any of the "big agencies". Congratulations to Anne Esse, designer and Kate Sonnick, copywriter. In today's Rochester Democrat & Chronicle Anne modestly gives Kate credit for the concept. While I personally haven't have the opportunity yet to work with Anne, I have worked with Kate and can say she is one of the most creative people in the business. 

I'm really anxious to find out what Phase 2 of the Wild Woolies will be. Can you ladies give us a hint?

Fly Away Sweepstakes

The Fly Away Sweepstakes is a great example of a promotion that follows the basic principals of promotional marketing: It offers the right prize to the right audience; it builds the brand and meets the objective of which is collecting a qualified database of consumers.

IMA, In Flight Media Associates, sponsors this promotion. They are the creators of Global Trends in Travel a video series which airs on Continental Airlines. This program is the first of its kind in the airline industry to integrate in-flight video, print, audio and online together with a sweepstakes that's a branding opportunity for Continental as well as featured destinations around the world.

Each month a different featured destination is promoted that includes a sweepstakes offering a chance to win a trip to that destination. This month's (March) promotion is the Fly Away to Scotland Sweepstakes. It is not only promoted online and in the 6-minute in-flight video (which also appears of the promotional website), but also in Continental's in-flight Magazines and on the Continental Audio Talk Program which airs right after Larry King and Guests.  The promotion is now in its second year and one that I have been proud to be a part of through my company, DDC Marketing Group.

The way it works is that people that enter the sweepstakes can opt-in to receive destination information from the featured travel partner. So if you're interested in learning more about travel to Scotland or helicopter golf packages you just check the box and Scotland's National Tourist Board and Carr Golf & Corporate Travel will follow up. Myself being a golfer, I couldn't resist signing up to get information from both of then and I hope to visit soon. At the end of the month the travel partners then receive a qualified database of perspective customers who have specified that they want information.

The grand prize always includes round trip airfare on Continental Airlines since all the featured destinations are those that they service. For Continental it drives people to their website as well as builds their brand. By the way, travel is still in the top three prizes that people seek - Cash, Cars and Trips!

And for IMA, it promotes their video programming capabilities directly to Continental's passenger base that is made up mostly of those with a higher median household income, 40+ in age, and over 50% professional/managerial. So, it's a win-win situation all around.

Last year we had in excess of 25,000 entries nearly every month for a chance to win trips to Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, Mexico a Caribbean Cruise, and others. I've been the one to inform each winner every month that they have been selected and it is just a thrill to do this. Our last winner will be off to Ireland and since I have visited there before I was able to give him some suggestions as well as what the Travel partner, Discover Ireland provides. Next month, April, we'll be promoting Israel by partnering with their Ministry of Tourism which will be a new destination for this year.

So, go ahead and enter. We're all professionals that travel a lot. I'm sure any destination travel partner wouldn't mind having us in their database!

Welcome to Donna's Promo Talk

Welcome to Donna's Promo Talk where we will blog about current promotions and trends within the promotional marketing arena. I will focus on interactive and mobile phone promotions, such as sweepstakes, games, contests and especially those that include consumer-generated content, as well as other social media programs, but I won't limit our talk just to these areas.

Dove's Cream Oil Body Wash Gets an Oscar

A second promotion to come out of the Dove Real Beauty Campaign is for the launch of their new Dove Cream Oil Body Wash product line. Back at the end of 2006 Dove ran a contest in which they provided online tools such as product shots at www.dovecreamoil.com to be combined with consumer generated video ads that promoted the product. 1,000 videos where submitted by the deadline of Jan. 15th and posted online.

So, similar to what Doritos did for their consumer-generated ads during the Super Bowl, Dove planned to do for this promotion. This time it was the Oscars and not only did they run the winning ad, but they bought another 30 second spot to run before it so that Grey's Anatomy star Sara Ramirez could introduce the ad as well as its creator, 22-year-old Lindsay Miller from Sherman Oaks, Calif. Lindsay sings into a pink hairbrush and dances in the shower and told "Good Morning America" anchor Chris Cuomo "Thinking about beauty and what it means to me … and to me it's when I'm doing the ridiculous things that I'm doing."

By utilizing Sara Ramirez together with Lindsay, Dove is connecting with a much younger female audience that they have been with their ProAge line ads which are utilizing 50+ real women. Dove Marketing Director Kathy O'Brien said "We love the contrast of Dove real women against the glitz and celebrity of the (Oscars)."

Visitors to www.dovecreamoil.com now can view both the intro ad by Sara and the winning ad by Lindsay as well as enter the new contest to become the next Dove Real Women. You just need to submit an essay explaining why you should appear in the next Dove ad and a photo of yourself. The following will be the criteria for this contest: Written Expression (Essay only-50%), Sincerity (Essay only-40%) and Photo's Relevance (10%). We'll have to wait till May 15th to find out who the new winner is and what TV network will first air the winning ad. Perhaps ABC will run it during the season finale of Grey's Anatomy?  We'll just have to wait and see.