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

Twitter Gets the Congress Tweeting and Others Searching

The growth of Facebook was a focus of my last post and now I can't help but write about Twitter. ABC World News with Charlie Gibson tonight talked about Twitter. After covering President Obama's first address to a joint session of congress, their next story was about how many of those members were busy adding their own commentary by Twittering while sitting in the audience. Now you know that this is going mainstream when you have the evening national news covering this story!

You can take a look at the "Twitterstream" yourself at Tweet Congress. You'll see some respectful disagreements and some real enthusiasm for the President that runs right down party lines. I've been on Twitter now for almost a year, but have to admit I haven't been as regular a tweeter as many of those that I follow. Recently though I've been trying to learn and participate more in this social media phenomenon since it's been becoming so popular.

One thing I've been trying out lately is the Twitter search tool. So last night during the address I not only logged in, tweeted and saw what those that I was following had to say, but I used the search feature to see what people in general on Twitter were saying about this particular subject. It was really cool!

Friends of Buffalo Plane Crash Family Utilize Facebook and Internet to Seek Support

On Saturday there was a memorial service for Doug Wielinski who was killed when flight 3407 crashed on Feb. 12th. The plane struck his home and his wife, Karen, and one of their four daughters, Jill, were also in the house at the time. Miraculously both of them got out safely.

When I first turned on the news the morning after and heard about the plane crash for the first time I assumed there would be some local connections to Rochester, which there were.

On Tuesday I received an email that was forwarded to me from one of my friends in Rochester regarding a petition that someone had started to get Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to rebuild a home for the Wielinski family. It included an invitation to sign the petition and provided this link to PetitionOnline.com to do so. I signed the petition even though I had never heard of PetitionOnline.com before. Last I checked there were over 146,000 signatures on this one for the Wielinskis. On the site you can click on the signatures and read some of the comments that people have left. The page also states that is was created and written by Krista Lynn Sabourin and that it was the top active petition all week.

And the Oscar Goes To....This Year's Winning Promotions

There has been quite a lot of buzz around this year's Oscar nominees and this Sunday we'll be able to pull up a seat to watch the 81st Annual Academy Awards on ABC and see who get to take home a coveted Oscar. We have some favorites back this year, as well as some brand new names, with a first time host, Hugh Jackman.

 As with the Super Bowl there will be some memorable ads broadcast during the telecast. I've written about a few of this year's interactive promotions associated with the event over here at Lipsticking today including the Oscar's Designer Challenge.

So again today's my day to be the Lipsticking guest blogger so please hop on over and continuing reading "And the Oscar Goes to..."

2009 Valentine's Day Promotions: Godiva's Chocolate Decedence Suite is Back

This weekend is Valentine's Day and it will fall on a Saturday, which will make it a big night out to dinner for many couples. Even this year with the struggling economy, people will still celebrate the holiday with their loved ones.

According to the National Retail Federation’s 2009 Valentine’s Day Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, the average consumer plans to spend $102.50 on Valentine’s gifts and merchandise, down slightly from last year’s $122.98 per person. Total spending on Valentine’s Day is expected to reach $14.7 billion, down from last year's $17.02 billion.

When it comes to spending, most people will still buy traditional favorites even though they plan to spend less. Over one-third (35.7%) of people will buy flowers, nearly the same as last year’s 35.9%, and 16% will buy jewelry, compared to 16.6% in 2008. In addition, more people this year will send greeting cards than they did last year (58% vs. 56.8% in 2008). Others will head to their favorite restaurant (47%), purchase clothing (10.2%) or a gift card/gift certificate (11%).

Godiva Chocolatier is at it again this year offering all last minute shoppers the opportunity to order by tomorrow for delivery on Friday (they don't offer Saturday delivery ). Godiva is also bringing back last year's Valentine's Day promotion which was their biggest ever...the chance for a chocolate lover to win the ultimate chocolate fantasy!

The Grand Prize Winner of the Godiva 2nd Annual Valentine's Day Promotion will receive a deluxe trip for two to New York City and stay in the exclusive Godiva Decadence Suite in NYC's Bryant Park Hotel. This year's once-in-a-lifetime experience year has been designed by Jonathan Adler and reinterpreted in chocolate by Larry Abel Designs. The suite boasts chocolate furnishings and accessories inspired by Adler's signature pieces. Notorious style and design icon, Brooke Shields will be on hand to unveil the chocolate oasis. Check this out:

To play the Godiva Valentine's Day Game consumers must first obtain a game piece which are included in specially marked Valentine’s Day gift boxes $25 and up. Free game pieces can be obtained through the mail by requesting one postmarked by March 2nd. 100 first prizes which consist of one year of Godiva products will also be awarded as 12 monthly shipments along with an item from the Jonathan Adler collection. If not all prizes are awarded through the instant-win game, consumers can also enter the sweepstakes through a second chance drawing that's noted in the Official Rules.

If you're staying home this Valentine's day you can listen to Slacker's Valentines Day stations that they've put together for the holiday. Some of them are sweet, some fun and then there is the hilarious Broken Hearted station which is a melancholy mix of lost love and yearning with a touch of soulful redemption. These songs of heartbreak and hope will show you that sadness can be beautiful and love is fleeting but always on the horizon.

Whatever way you decide to celebrate, you still have a little time to get those last minute gifts, so get shopping and Happy Valentine's Day!!

March Madness - Conferences that is... PMA's Annual and SES New York

Well I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning wondering what to do today without any more football (yeah the NFL's Pro Bowl is on, but so what?) So I thought I'd do a little bit of housekeeping and update the sidebars in my blog which still had some old events posted.

I've also been trying to plan out what I'm doing the rest of this first quarter and where my travels will take me. Besides trying to slip in an extended weekend to see my parents in Myrtle Beach (and play some golf and feel some warmer air), there are a couple of conferences that I'm planning on attending.

First is PMA's Annual Integrated Marketing Conference that's always in Chicago and this year it's on March 10th and 11th at the Fairmont Hotel. I've been blogging about  PMA events for the past two years since I started this blog and I wouldn't miss this event. Last year's was great and this year with a theme of "The Integrated Marketing Revolution: Change the Way You Think" it should be extremely relevant.

PMA will focus this event on integrated marketing planning as a discipline which is changing at cyber speed.  With new categories, new media, new retail formats, and new social networks, the question they will try to answer is how do marketers plan for the new frontier?

Jackie Stone, SVP Promotions at Digitas, is back as conference co-chair along with Angie Bleck, Integrated Marketing Manager for Kimberly Clark. They have planned out a great balance from both the agency and the brand perspectives. So check out the agenda that has some great speakers from companies such as Dunkin Donuts, Nokia, Harley Davidson, Mindshare, Conagra Foods and more. Topics are diverse, which they should be if we're talking integrated marketing. So I hope to see you there.

Then a couple of weeks from this event is the Annual SES (Search Engine Strategies) Conference in New York which is again at the NY Hilton. I attended last year and now that I'm managing PPC search advertising campaigns for a wide variety of clients I'm really looking forward to this year's event. I won't be attending the basic sessions that I did last year, but now looking to take my knowledge to the next level.

This conference is all about how to generate traffic to your website through the search engines whether its through free "organic" traffic or through the paid "sponsored" search ads. It's hard to keep up with what's next in the constantly evolving world of web search, and this is one place to help you do that.

The conference takes place over a full week beginning on March 23 with workshops on Monday and Friday and sessions on Tuesday - Thursday. We get started with Tuesday morning's keynote speaker Guy Kawasaki talking about Twitter as a Tool for Social Media and then on Thursday we have John Gerzema from Young & Rubicam and best-selling author of The Brand Bubble: The Looming Crisis in Brand Value and How to Avoid It. And of course representatives from Google will be there as well as Yahoo. Check out the agenda and I hope to see you in New York!

So March is looking pretty busy. I better get down to Myrtle Beach before then! Let me know if any of you will be at either of these conferences. I would love to try and meet up.

95% of Super Bowl Ads Scored Online

So were you one of the 148.3 million people that watched at least part of Super Bowl XLIII this past Sunday with the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Arizona Cardinals? It was the second-most-watched Super Bowl ever, just behind 2008's record-breaking  game between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots.

NBC said it did sell out of all its ad inventory getting $206 million dollars, which is up from the $186.3 million Fox sold last year for the game. So advertisers did pay more and got less viewers. I've been writing about the ads and promotions associated with Super Bowl XLIII here and here and I asked the question in my last post of how many ads would actually try and get their money's worth by driving viewers online to extend the experience?

Last year I learned that 64% of the Super Bowl ads promoted their website after which I had predicted a much higher percentage. So I wasn't sure what to expect this year. Would the advertisers get it right and make their $100,000 a second ad pay off?