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

GAP's PRODUCT (RED) Launch - Best Promotion of 2007

Since I wrote about awards in my last post I would be remiss if I didn't write a post on the winners of the 2007 Pro Awards which were given out last week on the evening of Sept. 18th during the PROMO Live event in Chicago . The PRO Awards are sponsored by PROMO Magazine to recognize the "Best in Promotional Marketing". There were 22 categories this year with three finalists from each category presented at the event and the winners from each announced live.

The Best Promotion of 2007 Award went to the GAP (Product) Red Launch from the promotions agency A Squared Group. Gap was one of a number of brands to license the logo for PRODUCT (RED) which was founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver to raise awareness and money for the Global Fund to help HIV/AIDS sufferers in Africa. As a global partner of (PRODUCT) RED, Gap is contributing half the profits from Gap (PRODUCT) RED sales to the Global Fund so the retailer wanted to create some excitement.

An INSPI(RED) backdrop was created for an in-store Oprah taping for an Oct. 13th show that highlighted the Gap’s (PRODUCT) RED collection and generated worldwide press coverage while driving record breaking sales. The company literally rolled out the red carpet for a visit by both Oprah and Bono at their  Chicago flagship store which is a six story building on Michigan Ave. They wrapped the store in words used in the PRODUCT (RED) campaign and inside the store a 20 feet two-tier display was covered with mannequins dressed in Gap's (RED) collection.

This statement from Amy Cotteleer, CEO of A Squared Group, was reported by PROMO...“We created a canvas for them that was a representation of their commitment to the RED cause and really showed that Gap was willing to express that in a larger-than-life way. There were incredible hurdles...We had less than a month to get all these approvals and at every turn they could have told us no. We just kept going back and saying here's why you have to say yes.”

This entry also won the Best Creative Pro Awards category and Best Cause-Based Promotion. According to A Squared Group, Gap.com sold through their first shipment of INSPI(RED) T-shirts within hours after the first airing of the Oprah show. and within 48 hours 30,000 people signed up to receive email alerts. Also, the promotion generated over 150 million impressions with an estimated ad value of $2 million.

You can visit PROMO Magazine to see a complete listing of all finalists in the various categories. The Gap campaign was also a finalist in the Reggie Awards which PMA gave out last March and you can see the case study which was developed by A Squared Group along with more photos and a video they created for the launch. So, don't forget to purchase some PRODUCT (RED)to help out a great cause. You can purchase them here at GAP.com.

Viral Marketing at its Best

The OMMA Awards which honor brand marketers, agencies and content providers in the area of online advertising creative were given out last night at the New York Hilton. MediaPost put on this second annual event which took place this week in order to coincide with Advertising Week 2007 and the OMMA (Online Media, Marketing and Advertising) Conference and Expo. These awards were given out in 20 categories to those who "push the potential of online advertising".

The Extreme Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments, which was a campaign that I wrote about in the PROMO Live Day Two post from last week, won the Best Viral Campaign Award as well as the Best of Show.  In my post I listed the many examples of successful viral video campaigns that Jim McCafferty from JP Creative shared with us during his "Virtual Slide Show" session. I promised to report back to you with more about the Viral Program 101 course that Jim also shared with us, so in light of the OMMA Best of Show Award I thought today would be appropriate. So, here it is:

1. The obvious...define the goal
2. Be creative and produce content that has a "Wow" factor
3. Identify your "Bacon" (a joke referencing Kevin Bacon) in other words find those that will help spread the word in the circles you wish to target
4. Be flexible and open to modifications
5. Define your budget and the tools you will use to create the content
6. Seed it, seed it, seed it
7. Monitor it and measure
8. Adapt to opportunities as they arise
9. Monitor and measure again
10. Capture audience data and input
11. Adapt it again

Jim suggested seeding the content on many different sites and under different names. He found that these different identities can become valuable assets in the future. There are many websites now that you can upload videos to seed in various places. Just "Goggle" the words "Video Sharing" and you'll find many of these. I was amazed really at how many of them exist besides the big one, YouTube. I came across Light Reading which I thought was very useful. It lists the Top Ten Video Sharing sites and ranks them for ease of use, file storage size, flexibility and distribution as well as it includes some overall comments about each.

Jim left us with these main principals of viral marketing that we should follow:

Creating good content, working hard, being aggressive and having the willingness to try. Jim said, "It's okay to fail and you can fail quickly, but then figure out what you need to do to achieve success."

Here's the video. Enjoy.

PROMO Live: Destination Online - Creating Micro-Sites and Viral Campaigns

I'm back from Chicago where I attended PROMO Magazine's PROMO Live event last week. I stayed a couple of extra days and my husband Kevin came out and joined me so that we could spend our anniversary together. We had a wonderful time. We both love visiting Chicago...it's got a beautiful lake front, great shopping and restaurants, but mostly we enjoy the people. They're always so friendly and welcoming to all visitors. Plus they love their sports (Go Cubs!).

So I apologize for not getting some more postings done on the conference. I promised to write one about a session I attended that I really enjoyed entitled Destination Online by Bill Hanekamp, CEO of The Well Advertising. Micro-sites have been becoming very popular and successful over the past year and Bill spoke about the differences between a promotional micro-site and a corporate website. His theory for their success is that most corporate websites are managed internally by the company's IT department where a micro-site is managed mostly by the marketing team!

The main objectives of a micro-site are to engage, act, build relationships and share. The site should contain content that entertains, is relevant to the audience, timely and exclusive. Micro-sites may also include consumer generated content that the audience provides and engages in. Some ways to get users involved are by providing an opportunity for them to post comments and reviews, rank or vote online, use widgets, download/upload files, share content and of course buy.

Brands can use a micro-site to develop databases by including an incentive for the audience such as a chance to win through sweepstakes, contests or games or by offering free gifts or samples. Here are a few great examples of popular micro-sites that Bill shared with us:

Philips' Norelco Bodygroom: ShaveEverywhere.com - This hilarious site became one of the most popular viral ad campaigns receiving 1.3 million unique visits in the first 3 months and was Philips' most successful new product launch to date.

WillItBlend.com presented by Blendtec: This micro-site features the Total Blender shown in their test lab as they ask the question... Will It Blend? In this funny video they chose to blend an iPhone. They received 6 million visitors in the first 5 days and it was the 3rd most watched video on YouTube.

Dove's CampaignForRealBeauty: This very popular micro-site I have written about in several posts in this blog and Dove continues to create separate micro-sites for their new products. Here is the first video that they ran called Evolution which received 1.7million views in the first few months.

Office Max's Elf Yourself: For last holiday season Office Max created this fun little micro-site where visitors could upload a photo of themselves, crop it to fit their face on an elf's body and then watch themselves dance. The cast from ABC's Good Morning America elfed themselves and featured it as the opening segment of one of their shows. I found the video here on YouTube. The micro-site received 36 million visits in 5 weeks with 10 elfings per seconds tracked. Unfortunately, Office Max didn't keep the site up, but a search says that it will be back up soon for this holiday season.

Bill's advice to any of us who would like to create a micro-site is to start out small and make sure to track, analyze and optimize. Over time you can make corrections and end up with a highly successful program. You can learn more about micro-sites and reach Bill by visiting his website: TheWellAdvertising.com

PROMO Live Day Two Overview

Well I was very glad that I made it over to Navy Pier in time this morning to hear Jim McCafferty's session on day two of the PromoLive Promotional Marketing Event. I was however a few minutes late and heard that I just missed the beach balls being bounced around the room. Jim was very entertaining and did get the group pumped up for the day with his "Powering Up Your Creative" presentation that he gave without the use of a PowerPoint!

Jim, President and CEO of JMP Creative, gave us this advice to help increase our creativity..."think inside another box, not out of the box". He gave us some tools as well as examples of what he uses to help his team come up with great ideas. Here's a few of them:

• IdeaFisher - Software program designed to speed up the creative process by working on principles of association and memory retrieval.
• Masterwriter - Songwriting software that helps with rhyming components and ideal for creating taglines.
• Handwrite the objective on a piece of paper 3x's before you start any ideation session.
• Collect images of things that are cool, unique and unusual and archive them into categories. Put them on your iPod to review anywhere, anytime.
• Do the same for really cool videos and keep track of their links.

Jim shared with us many images that he's collected to help get our creative juices going. In summary he advised us to really look at projects in a totally different way in order to get people talking about them and to help stay competitive today.

We were treated to more of Jim later in the afternoon when he shared with us his "Virtual Slide Show" which consisted of some very famous viral video campaigns, including a look again at Eepybird and the Diet Coke/Mentos fountain experiment. This session also included a brief Viral Program 101 course which I'll have to write about in it's own post. Jim really did give us all some great take-ways for the day. As they say, if you learn one or two things and walk away with one good idea, then the conference was worth the time and money.

Another session I really enjoyed was called Social Media: Evolution to Execution which was a panel comprised of four unique marketers each with their own blog. Again I'll have to devote a separate post to this session since it really crystallized everything that I've learned sine I've started blogging. For now I just have to share the story Herb Sawyer,the panel moderator from Carmichael Lynch Spong, told us about his mom from Iowa that "really scares him sometimes". Here's a women he told us that can't program her own VCR, but does goes online occasionally using a dial-up connection. She commented on a blog not knowing that "Give us your thoughts here" had entered her in the blogosphere.

I ended the day listening some more to Daniel Levine, founder of Avant-Guide, talk about "The 5 Rules of Cool" and showing us some great examples of brands that innovated to be cool. I got a chance to chat with him after the session since it was the last one of the conference and asked him about what he sees as the top cultural trends that marketers should be watching for today. More to come on this as well.

So I'm really interested in hearing from those of you that attended to hear your thoughts about the event. I got a chance to speak to several people during the breaks and I heard many different comments both positives and negatives. I can say that the conference was lacking in the presence of the big name brands that normally attract attendees as well as sponsors. But what it lacked there I think it made it up by having experts from various agencies and service providers who gave some very practical, open and honest advice and were very accessible to speak with throughout the event.

I'll continue to post on this event and provide more details. I would love to hear from those that attended as well as those that didn't who may have some questions or may be able to provide additional input to these topics. Thanks to all who put on the event as well as those that shared their thoughts and experiences with us.   

PROMO Live Day One Overview

It was a beautiful late summer day when I arrived in Chicago yesterday morning and it's starting out that way again today. I'm here attending PROMOLive, the promotional marketing event for brands and agency marketers being held at the Navy Pier. I actually made it in time for the first session after catching an early morning fight into Midway Airport.

Daniel Levine from Avant-Guide ,who I've written a post already on this blog, started the day by interviewing Elizabeth Harrison from the PR firm, Harrison Shriftman. Elizabeth talked about some of the work her agency has done with a variety of clients to help position their brands as cool or as she says "hit it up" to help increase their market share. Most of the discussion centered around how to work with the right celebrities that can help to foster that emotional connection and create passion for the brand.

After this general session we were invited into the Hub for some coffee and refreshments and had the chance to visit with a few exhibitors at their booths. It was set-up very similar to last year's event, but I can't help but think back to when I exhibited at this show and the room was filled with many different exhibitors. With information so readily available through the Internet now I guess there doesn't seem to be a need as much for this anymore. However, I did get to meet with a couple of companies that I found their services unique and something that I may have a need for in the near future.

After the "refreshment break" we were given the option to attend one out of five break-out sessions. It just so happened that during this first period there were several that I wanted to go to and wish they were scheduled during another time since some of the topics in the later times weren't quite as high on my list of interests. I ended up going to the session entitled "Destination Online" presented by Bill Hanekamp from Microsite.com. This one was my favorite of the day and it appeared to be that of many others since it was a full room with standing room only. Bill spoke and gave examples of many famous micro-sites and pointed out that a microsite is run by the marketing team, vs. the corporate website, which is run by the IT department. I'm going to devote a whole post to Bill's presentation once I have more time to write.

The last session of the day brought us all back together to review PROMO's industry trends which I already wrote a post on since they released the report prior to the event. The event manager said that there were about 250 attendees at this year's event, which was up a bit from last year. There weren't that many people at this last session, but those that weren't there didn't miss much since most of the data is available in this month's PROMO Magazine which you can pick up a copy at PROMO's booth or view it online.

Perhaps many people didn't stay for the end of the day welcome reception because they went back to their hotel to get ready to attend the PROMO Awards party and presentation which began at 6 pm in the Grand Ballroom of the Navy Pier. As I was leaving I noticed several women coming in dressed in their little black dresses, definitely not conference session attire. So either my assumption was correct, or they were just coming for the party and had not attended the conference all day. I decided not to attend the party since I was still traveling on East coast time and wanted to get back to my room to write. Unfortunately I had a severe problem with my laptop, the screen somehow got cracked and some of the letters on the keyboard wouldn't work at all. So, instead I'm using the computer in the hotel's business center to write this post on Wednesday morning.

For now I'm going to head back over to the Navy Pier for Day 2 of the event. There's a general session starting at 9:45 that I don't want to miss by Jim McCafferty, President and CEO of JMP Creative that's entitled "Powering Up Your Creative". Hopefully it will get us all powered up for the day. Stayed tune for more to come.

Heinz TV Challenge Ad Contest...and the Emmy Goes To

Heinz is following right in the footsteps of Dorito's who first aired the winning ads of their consumer-generated contest during the Super Bowl as well as Dove which aired it's Cream Oil Body Wash ad, created also by a consumer, during the Academy Awards. Last night those watching the Emmy Awards got to see the winning ad of the Heinz Top This! TV Challenge for the first time.

Andrew Dobson of Wheelersburg, Ohio, won first place with his ad titled "Heinz: The Kissable Ketchup". The 30-second spot features his stepson who receives a kiss from a little girl after putting the last bit of Heinz ketchup on her hot dog which left none for his. It's very cute and it serves as a true brand building message for the company. Dobson runs a one-man production shop and is the recipient of the $57,000 grand prize which was the amount offered as a way to tie into their Heinz 57 varieties.

In the first post I wrote on this promotional contest I was questioning whether ketchup was the right product to do a consumer-generated ad contest with since some of the initial submissions were not exactly good for the brand. However, I wrote again in this post last month that Heinz was extremely happy with the results of the promotion and according to their ad agency partner, Smith Brothers Advertising, they had well over 8,000 videos submitted to YouTube.

The four runner-up ads were aired during this morning's Today Show on NBC. Each of these runners-up will receive $5,700. You can view all 15 semi-finalist ads that were voted on here.

BTW - I'm headed to Chicago first thing tomorrow to attend the PROMOLive Conference. It's going to be a long day and I'll be working on East Coast time, so I probably won't write anything till Wednesday morning. Today are the Pre-Conference Workshops which include their full-day PROMO U that I attended a few years ago which was very good. Also there's a half day workshop on Games, Contests and Sweeps hosted by ePrize. So, anyone attending these workshops today let us know what you thought of them.

PROMO Live Welcomes Daniel Levine From Avant-Guide

PROMOLive begins this Monday, Sept. 17 and runs through Wednesday, Sept. 19th again being held at the Navy Pier in downtown Chicago. This is PROMO Magazine's annual Promotional Marketing Event for Brand and Agency Marketers which I wrote about in this post last week and that I'll be attending as a guest blogger!

Beginning first thing Tuesday morning when I arrive at Midway Airport I'm going to head right over to the Navy Pier in order to catch Daniel Levine, Executive Director of Avant-Guide Institute. He'll be opening up the first session of the conference with "PROMO Aloud: The Innovation Interviews". They describe this session as giving us an "exhilarating look forward to the most fascinating and profitable trends heading our way." Daniel will be questioning before our live audience some of this year’s leading-edge creative thinkers about major cultural developments driving promotional marketing into the next decade.

So I checked out Avant-Guide's website to learn more about Mr. Levine. It says that he's a Conference Speaker, Global Trends Consultant and a TV and Radio Guest. A quote from CNN says: "Daniel Levine is the ultimate guru of cool.... He has a remarkable ability to distill cool to its essence and articulate it in a way we can all benefit from." Now that's not the way we typically describe us marketers, although some us would like to be!

The site says that Daniel's "Tomorrow Today" speaker session is "brimming with to-the-point examples of where culture and business are headed. This one-of-a-kind presentation reveals the latest international developments in your own industry, as well as the newest advances in other industries that will substantially impact your businesses."

Daniel's done work with a wide range of businesses such as MasterCard, Samsonite, HBO, NBC, Saatchi and Saatchi and Deutsche Telekom AG. He's the founder of Avant-Guide, which claims to be the leading resource for style. They are in the process of assembling an influential community of consumers along with a select network of destinations, merchants and service providers that caters to them. Their seminal product, the highly-acclaimed Avant-Guide city series, is one of the fastest-growing guidebooks in North America and Europe. They also have the Global Trends Blog that welcomes you to the world of Avant-Guide and includes an interview with Michael Stipe, from R.E.M., one of my all-time favorite bands.

So, I'm really looking forward to Daniel's session Tuesday morning. I'm going to try my best to catch up with him while at the conference and ask him a few questions regarding where he sees our industry heading. If you have something specific that you'd like me to ask him please let me know. You can also send Daniel an email directly off the PROMOLive Microsite where he's listed under speakers and where he's posted the Michael Stipe interview in the PROMOLive blog as well.  And yes, I've been added to the Microsite as a Conference Blogger along with access to post on their blog with a link back to this blog. So, I hope to get the conversation going one way or another.

PROMO Magazine Releases their 2007 Industry Trends Report

PROMO Magazine last week released their new 2007 Industry Trends Report which includes results from an annual survey of marketers and agencies. The editorial team from PROMO is scheduled to review these results at the PROMO Live show taking place in Chicago next week, September 18 & 19. In the meantime, here's a quick overview of what they will be saying.

The report confirms now more than ever that promotional marketing is no longer the stepchild to advertising and that the two are really blurring together. More firms this year, nearly two-third or 65%, are now saying that promotions are part of their overall marketing strategy. Only 9% said that they develop them separately and another 24% said they develop them after in order to use other disciplines to lead the promotional strategy. So, this conclusion coincides with what we have been hearing earlier this year both at PMA's Annual Conference, which I wrote about in this past post, as well as at the Interactive Promotions Summit, which I covered in this particular post.

The report also states that budgets now have become more evenly split between consumer promotion, advertising and trade. The plans call for promotion budgets to continue to grow and advertising to further decline. 42% said they plan to increase consumer promotion spending with a third of those dollars specifically allocated to online media.

It shouldn't be a surprise that measuring promotions is now more important to marketers as promotions have become a bigger part of the overall marketing strategy. Sales growth is still the number one factor in determining the success of a promotion. However, increased brand awareness has now become more of a factor. Some other measurement results utilized include ROI, increased customer knowledge, incremental sales, lead generation and response rates.

Direct mail is again the most widely used medium, with 37% of the mix, and a close second is the Internet with 32%. When asked what percentage of their consumer and trade promotion budgets would be spent online, 24% said 25-50% of their budget, however, 36% said 75-99% of their promotion budget would still be offline.

The report goes on to give an overview of the many different categories of promotions. I'm just going to mention two of them here since they relate more to my business as well as to this blog.

The first category I'd like to highlight is "Games, Contests and Sweepstakes". Of course the report features the biggest trend to hit this category, and one that I have been writing quite a bit about,... contests with consumer- generated content. More and more brands have been hoping on the band-wagon and letting the consumer be their advocate, and in many cases, creating the actual ads as well. Dorito's really popularized this trend with their ad contest in which they broadcast the winners during the Super Bowl. I've done many individual posts on contests this year that you can review and I have two in particular that you may really want to check out: The Top 10 CGC Promotional Contests Part 1 and Part 2. Both have become very popular.

Companies spent $1.83 billion dollars creating games and contests in 2006 and the numbers are expected to reach $1.846 billion by 2009. 17% of companies outsource their playable promotions, so since that is what my business, DDC Marketing Group, specializes in we hope to see an increase as well over the next couple of years.

The other category that I'd like to highlight from the report is "Interactive". Larry Jaffe, Editor in chief of PROMO writes "No need to wait - the future of online promotions is here today". This survey also confirms what we've been reading in all other reports as well...the increase in Internet advertising is making up for the lack of growth in traditional advertising media. Online ad spending is the only medium experiencing double-digit growth which hit a new record of $4.9 billion in the first quarter of this year.

Paid search advertising is expected to exceed $11 billion by 2008 and hit almost $9 billion by the end of this year. The report also makes note that the college kids of today became of age with computers, cell phones and the Internet. Therefore, they interact with media differently than the generations before them and spend up to three hours a day online compared to 30 minutes for the general population.

There's quite a bit more information in the report that you can download for free here on PROMO's website. Take a look and let me know if you'd like to highlight something else that's in the report. All in all it sounds like a good outlook for us promotional marketers.

Weekly Chances to Win with Football Cash Promotions

Well if you read my post on Friday you'd have seen that I was very excited about the start of a new NFL Football season. My excitement is someone less today as my team, the Buffalo Bills, had a heartbreaking loss to the Denver Broncos on opening Sunday in their own home field. They were ahead the entire game and ended up losing by 1 point when Denver kicked a field goal in the last second of the game. However, they were lucky the score was that close. The Bills offense only had a total of 184 yards the entire game! That's pretty pitiful. So, they really didn't deserve to win.

While on the subject of football I wanted to take a moment to talk about a highly successful interactive promotion that I worked on with SCA Promotions a couple of years ago called Football Cash. We did it one year for Harrah’s casinos that was tied into the weekly schedule of the NFL and featured an insured prize pool of up to $1,000,000 in cash. Each week new game cards were delivered to Harrah's casino were five games that were being played that week were listed in each card with a matching total score. The more games with matching scores on a card, the more money available to win, and of course the higher the odds.

We also did a similar game for Aladdin’s Casino (now called Planet Hollywood) which was tied into the Super Bowl. It was similar to Football Cash but only included the one game with different outcomes to match such as total field goals, total sacks, etc. Again there was an insured prize pool, however, this one only went up to the chance to win $100,000 in cash. The odds were based on the number of possible outcomes.

These games can basically be replicated again and used for any type of sporting event, but are really ideal for football. They are a great way for a brand to drive repeat traffic into a retail location and to leverage their sponsorship with a local team by featuring the weekly game. If you are interested in doing a promotion such as this please contact me and I will be glad to discuss the possibilities with you in more detail.

Now tonight is the first Monday Night Football game, this year on ESPN, and we are being treated to a double header. The first game begins at 7pm EST on the East Coast between the Cincinnati Bengals and the Baltimore Ravens and the other is 10:15 pm EST where San Francisco 49er's host the Arizona Cardinals.

BTW, please say a prayer for Kevin Everett of the Bills who suffered a severe spinal injury in yesterday's game. We're waiting on an update on his condition which should be announced this evening. It's a reminder of what a tough game football really is.

NFL FOOTBALL Week 1: Visa vs. MasterCard

September is my favorite month of the year for many reasons; one of them is sports! The pennant and wild card races are again heating up in MLB (damn those Yankees!). But mostly its the start of a brand new NFL Football season where we can all dream that this is going to be the year that our team makes it to the playoffs.

Well the season got underway last night with the opening game between the New Orleans Saints and the current Super-Bowl Champs, the Indianapolis Colts on NBC. The NFL has been using the Thursday night season opener now for a few years in which they've added pre-show festivities to attract a wider audience and give advertisers more media time. However, it just seems to get the real football fans more annoyed then anything, i.e. my husband who kept saying "this is crap".

What started out as an interesting game with a tie score going into the 2nd half quickly became an easy win for the Colts with a final 41 to 10 victory over the Saints. Peyton Manning, playing against his home town team, was the star of the game finishing 18-30 for 288 yards. What was also interesting is that the two leading credit card companies, both Visa and MasterCard, launched new marketing campaigns during last night's game. Visa is the Official Sponsor of the NFL and MasterCard is a sponsor of 20 local NFL teams.

Visa ran a new TV spot, “When the Saints Go Marching In,” featuring Saints stars Drew Brees and Reggie Bush which shows fans using their Visa cards to buy Saints apparel and other things during game day. At Visa.com/NFL fans can enter the Visa Inside Pass NFL sweepstakes for a chance to win trips to the Playoffs, Super Bowl and Pro Bowl. There are automatic entries into the sweeps every time someone uses there Visa card between now and 12/15. Plus there's an online entry form and once registered, you can play the Visa NFL Instant Win Game.  Players just click on the lockers and if they find 3 helmets inside they can win prizes from the NFLshop.com and everyone at least receives a 10% discount when using their Visa card to purchase.

Visa also is supporting in-stadium promotions with NFL teams as well as ties to EA Sports’ “Madden NFL 08” video game where they did a pre-launch promotion that also included the retailer GameStop. People who bought the game with their Visa cards prior to the game’s release were entered in a sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip to the Super Bowl. A second promotion, which runs through Sept. 30, also gives buyers a shot at the Super Bowl and the Madden Bowl.

MasterCard took the opportunity last night to launch their "Priceless Pep Talks with Peyton Manning" promotion. Fans can visit priceless.com and can send customized email pep talks from Manning to their friends. There is a series of 12 tongue-
in-cheek vignettes in which Manning appears on a practice field extolling satirical life lessons for fans (I just sent the  golf vignette to my husband). MasterCard ran two new spots last night staring the quarterback, "Social Live" and "Spouse Fight", to kick-off this promotion which will be available at Priceless TV.

Peyton Manning  has been featured in five Priceless ads over the past two seasons and MasterCard has received an increase in traffic to its site whenever it has aired these spots. "I've really enjoyed the reaction from fans over the last few years on my participation in the MasterCard spots," said Manning. "The shoots have been great and they gave me a chance to get into 'character' and just let loose. As a fan myself, I think being able to e-mail a friend a personalized message is a fun new twist." BTW - If you haven't seen the SNL spoof ad that Peyton did for the United Way it's hilarious. I found it here on YouTube.

Now I'm a Buffalo Bills fan, so yes you can feel sorry for me. Week 1 opener is at home against the Denver Broncos. You can see the schedule at NFL.com where all the standings page is empty as of now (except of course for last night's game). It leaves you with that sense of hopefulness. So...are your ready for some football? Here's to a new NFL season...and listening to my husband yell at the TV!