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

Join The Cause to Help Violence Against Women

Since I launched this blog almost two years ago I've written several posts about Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty in an effort to help spread their positive self-esteem messages. One of the social media marketing firms that has helped Dove get this message out to us bloggers and into the social media word is RocketXL. I was recently honored when they contacted me about a totally new initiative that they're supporting that also involves empowering women.

So I couldn't help but utilize this blog as well as my guest blogging privileges on Lipsticking.com to help spread this message. Please visit my Lipsticking.com post to read about  The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and their Say NO To Violence Against Women which is the new movement that RocketXL is now working with. You can join this movement by just simply adding your signature to the widget found below.

Steal a Base, Steal a Taco Gives up more Free Tacos in 2008 Promoiton

I just sat down to watch the beginning of the 4th game of the 2008 World Series. Pattie Labelle is singing the Star Spangled Banner who happens to be a Philadelphia native. Boy she's got some set of lungs!

Last night they we're going at it pretty late due to a 91-minute rain delay which left most of us this morning not knowing who won or if they even played. But they did play and the Phillies are now up two games to one against the Tampa Bay Rays. Even though I'm still getting over the fact that my team, the Boston Sox, aren't here, it still is the World Series.

Taco Bell is at it again this year utilizing its sponsorship of Major League Baseball with a promotion that will give everyone in the U.S. a free taco if a player in this year's World Series steals a base. Fans across the country again have the opportunity to be a part of the World Series experience through the "Steal a Base, Steal a Taco" promotion.

The rules of the promotion state that if the first stolen base occurs during Games 1, 2, 3 or 4, people can order a free Crunchy Seasoned Beef Taco on Oct. 28 from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. at all participating Taco Bell locations. If the first base is stolen in Games 5, 6 or 7, the tacos will be given away on Nov. 3 during the same time frames.

Well last night B.J. Upton stole three bases and Carl Crawford added another as the Rays collected four stolen bases vs. the Phillies in Game 3 of the World Series. Unfortunately even though the Rays tied the game with the steals, they sill lost the game. 

The supporting Web site now promotes the fact that a "stolen base never tasted so good" and "You watched. You waited. Now you get a free taste of Taco Bell".

This promotion has turned out to be a great way to get consumers to sample its products. It gave away millions of tacos last year after Boston Red Sox center fielder Jacoby Ellsbury stole second base in the bottom of the 4th inning of Game 2.

Fifteen-second TV spots supporting the promotion began airing last week and continue running during the series. I've seen the ad twice so far tonight and it's still the first inning. A full-page ad is running in USA Today and online media is also promote the effort.

Taco Bell is in its fifth year as the official quick service restaurant of Major League Baseball. The company also plans to donate $20,000 to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, the official charity of Major League Baseball as well as Taco Bell, in the name of the player who steals the base in the 2008 series.

“Last year we gave away millions of tacos to America, and based on the wild popularity with consumers, we’re bringing back the promotion,” said David Ovens, chief marketing officer, Taco Bell Corp., in a statement. “With consumer sentiment near all time lows, ‘Steal A Base, Steal A Taco’ is our way of extending the magic of the World Series to everybody by celebrating the game and rewarding fans, no matter which team you root for.”

So hop on over to your closest Taco Bell on Tuesday to get your free Taco. I just had this conversation with my daughter's boyfriend who's a high school senior and works at a local Taco Bell. It's reassuring that he still promotes eating at this fast food chain even though he's an employee. So, Taco Bell must be doing something right.

We just had bases loaded at the bottom on the first and they walked in their first run although they lost the opportunity to score more. Phillies up 1-0 now. Go Phillies!

October is Pink Promotions for the Cure

It's still October, a very busy month. I wrote this post about October being the greatest month of the year for sports...my Boston Red Sox team is now history for this season. I guess it was never meant to be, so congrats to the Tampa Bay Rays. But how about those Buffalo Bills! They're on an amazing start to this year's NFL season.

I also wrote this post about October being the start of the holiday shopping season. October kicks off the 4th quarter which is such a crucial time for many marketers who count on this time of year to make their sales goals.

But what I haven't posted about yet, and something that is so relevant to my personal life, is that October is breast cancer awareness month!

I've  written about my mom many times in this blog and the fact that she has breast cancer. She was first diagnosed early in 2007, underwent chemo treatments, went cancer free for a few months, and now it's back. I believe I haven't written about it being back. My parents traveled up to New York State this past June for their first visit in over two years since they moved to South Carolina. Mom didn't seem quite right though so they decided to cut their stay short to get home to see her doctor.  The tests showed that the cancer seemed to creep back in, but this time it jumped from her breast to her lungs!

Celebrating Women's Leadership & Blog Action Day

Last night I attended an event that was hosted by one of our local organizations, the Rochester Women's Network. It was in celebration of their 30 year anniversary and the theme of this 30th year gala was "A Celebration of Women's Leadership.

Today was my turn to be a guest blogger on Lipsticking.com, so I wrote about this event in a post here which lead to a bigger discussion about women leaders, marketing and volunteering. I usually post every other Wednesday on Lipsticking for those of you that may be following me, but Yvonne DiVita (Lipsticking.com founder), wanted to write this post specifically on Oct. 15th in honor of Blog Action Day. I didn't get a chance to post on Wednesday, but I did follow up today with a somewhat related topic.

So, please check out both our posts. In the meantime I'm watching what looks like the end to the Red Sox's season. We need a miracle!

Donna's New Marketing Role

Well it's now probably been the longest lapse I've had in writing on my blog since I started Donna's Promo Talk some 20 months ago. I feel like I'm missing a part of me and I apologize to my loyal readers. But honestly I've just been very busy. There's many excuses I can give you, but the main reason is something that I think I should now finally come clean with. When I actually stopped to think about it I realized that I haven't written about this yet , so this post is my coming out of the closet so to speak.

Over the summer I started working for another company. I have been running my own company, DDC Marketing Group, which has specialized in online promotions for over three years now. 2007 was a pretty good year, however, as the year ended and 2008 began I started to see a slow-down in business. The calm before the storm I guess now that I look back. Business with existing clients was still going fairly strong, but new business was not materializing. So, I started to consider some options. 

When an opportunity came up for me to work with this privately-owned company, Butler/Till Media Services I jumped at it. The company is owned and managed by two great women (Sue Butler and Tracy Till) who I worked with during my early years in this business some 20 years plus ago. They've been growing and have consistently made the Rochester Top 100 Companies list for the past few years. The company's services are specifically focused on media placement...the planning, buying and execution of where you see, hear, read the message, not what the message is. Which is a little different for me to get used to again, but my roots do go back to the media side of the business.

I'm part of the online team at Butler/Till as their Emerging Online Media Supervisor. My responsibilities include managing the search marketing initiatives for our clients which has been the first priority and one which I'm still getting up to speed on. Second is to introduce new media strategies to our clients such as mobile marketing, social media, blog marketing and promotions.

I had to first get fully comfortable with utilizing Google's AdWords tool for multiple clients as well as get my head around paid search strategies and executions. I have spent much time these past couple of months reviewing our existing client campaigns as well as Google's Learning Center. I recently took the Google test and passed which now makes me a Google Adwords Qualified Professional.

I am committed to continuing my blogging both here, being a guest blogger at Lipsticking.com and a reader and commenter on many other blogs. I still strongly believe that the best way to be knowledgeable in this area is to actually partake in it. The same I learned goes for paid search marketing. While I could learn some by taking practice quizzes, and reading articles, the best way is to actually build a campaign from scratch and then manage and optimize it.

We just launched a small local online media program that is the first for me at the agency to call my "own client". It's to help promote a new exhibit that the George Eastman House right here in Rochester is hosting which just started this past weekend. The exhibit is called TRAINS! and it is comprised of three different exhibits that all celebrate trains through photographs, video, films and lectures.

We have placed banner ads on various local websites throughout New York State and into Canada which include utilizing Google's Content Network. It also includes a paid search program on Google for those actively searching for this information. The campaign just started on Oct. 1st and so far is doing very well and on it's way to reaching it's goal which is to drive traffic to this microsite that we also developed.

So, it's now exciting for me to be part of a larger team again and see our efforts start to pay off for clients. At first it was a big change going back into an office everyday and I'm still learning many processes and who to go to for what. But I'm also learning many new, interesting things as well as teaching others a few things about what I know. So that's what keeps us all young. Right?

As far as DDC Marketing there are projects and programs that I have committed to and I am continuing to follow through on all of these. I still plan to offer my promotional marketing services under the DDC Marketing name and will incorporate them into Butler Till when and if appropriate.

Right now I'm very proud to be part of a company that was just named one of the 50 Fastest-Growing Women-Owned/Led Businesses in North America by the Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO) and Entrepreneur Magazine.

So, I plan to share with you here more of what we're doing for some of our clients and pass on part of what I'm learning. I hope you'll stick with me as I adjust to my new roles and learn how to keep the balancing act going. Thanks for listening.

Sharp Teams up with MLB with their Lights Out Challenge Sweepstakes

It's October, and besides the upcoming presidential election and the doom and gloom about Wall Street and our ecomony, let's not forget that it's the most exciting month of the year for sports. I finally got around last week to writing this post about my favorite sport, NFL Football, and the excitement us Buffalo Bills fans have been feeling. We were certainly brought back to a hard reality this past Sunday when our starting quarterback went down on the second play of the game and we lost BIG! But hey, we got a bye coming up this week and we're still 4-1. Much better than we're we've been in over 10 years!

So now I have to talk about those boys of October. Yes, this year's Major League Baseball season is coming to a close. Neither New York teams made it to the playoffs this year and the playoffs have already showed us that 2008 isn't quite the year for those Chicago Cubs either. However, my team, the Boston Red Sox are in there. I'm watching them during Game 4 against the LA Angels right now on TBS as I write this.  So if I get distracted at some point, please give me a break.

Now I'm hoping that the Red Sox will be playing the Tampa Bay Rays next week on October 14th during the fourth game of the American League Championship Series. That's when Sharp Electronics will be teaming up with TBS on a really innovative promotion that will give fans a chance to win a Sharp big-screen TV.

Sharp is promoting its “Lights Out Challenge” with a series of 45-second TV spots that debuted during last week's initial round of Major League Baseball playoff action on TBS. These spots not only highlight the promotion but also the the brand's energy-saving TVs.

The spots direct fans to this TBS micro-site, where they can enter the Sharp Lights Out Challenge Sweepstakes for a chance to win a 46-inch or 42-inch Sharp Aquos TV. They can also register to participate in the partial blackout by indicating how many lights they intend to turn off and logging in their zip code.

“The end goal is to increase awareness and ultimately increase sales,” said Sharp spokesman Chris Loncto. “It really fits perfectly for us.”

Sharp Aquos is MLB’s official HDTV. This interactive promotion is a unique way to integrate traditional TV media with an online promotion. TV viewers during the fourth game of the ALCS  are typically a pretty sizable audience  giving that the series is the best of seven games. This should give Sharp an effective platform to push its LCD TV products in prime time while still at the beginning of the NFL season, at the start the NHL season and just in time for the important 4th quarter holiday shopping season.

Loncto noted that the company also is intent to present its energy-saving perspective: “One of the core philosophies of Sharp is to present products that are energy-saving and energy-creating,” he said.

The micro-site will feature a U.S. Map that will track the states that have turned out the most lights. Announcers on TBS will report on how much energy was saved and which states saved the most during the post-game show.

So whether the Boston Red Sox make it our not, I'll still be tuning in and shutting off some lights. This should be interesting. BTW - there still is no score in the top of the 5th inning, but the Angels are pushing with two men on base. Gotta go now!

Holiday '08 Marketing Outlook

Please hop on over to Lipsticking.com today to read my most recent post, Holiday '08 Marketing Outlook. I've included some interesting stats from BIG Research which gives us an advanced peak at consumer insights relating to this year's holiday gifting season. As we all probably are aware by now, it's not going to be a good one for us marketers, especially anyone in the apparel industry.

My previous post that I wrote on Lipsticking two weeks ago, Politics, Sexism, and Marketing to Millennial Women, received quite a few comments. Whether or not you read the post back then or not, you should take another look just to read some of the different opinions that it generated. It shows how really concerned most of us are today regarding the future of our country and economy.

I'm planning to cover many of the promotional and online campaigns that are focused on the holiday selling season over the next few months, so please stay tuned. If you're working on one that you'd like me to cover, please send me the information. Thanks.