Day 2 of PMA ’09 is just getting under way this morning. Yesterday was quite a full day that started off with Tony Palmer from Kimberly-Clark who shared with us some Aussie humor with a few down-under TV spots. Then we had Penry Price from Google as our luncheon keynote at mid-day who have us a great quick overview of today’s digital world. A look at Harley-Davidson’s creativity from Mark-Hans Richer, the current CMO was the afternoon highlight. Then we wrapped up the day with a dinner to celebrate the 26th Annual Reggie Awards.
After a dinner that consisted of filet migon and what looked and tasted like sweet mashed potatoes, they announced the winner of this year’s Super Reggie. Kraft Foods took home the big cash register this year with their Oreo Double Stuf Racing League (DSRL) campaign. As the headline of PMA’s special Reggie Awards supplement says, they “licked the competition”. The agency partners behind this successful campaign included Draftfcb (general and promotional advertising), Razorfish (digital), Digitas (online media), MediaVest (media), IMG (experiential) and Weber Shandwick (PR).
The promotion was first launched back in 2007 that I wrote about here since it was the first time we got to see the Manning brothers together endorsing a product. DSRL has now gained its position as an actual “professional sport”. Kraft claims that Double Stuf has enjoyed 16 consecutive months of sales growth since the program debuted and a 7% sales jump at the height of the promotion.
The objective they all started with was to differentiate the Double Stuf Oreo cookie from its older brother. “The spark came as we were thinking about fun new ways to engage consumers with Oreo,” explained John Ghingo, marketing director for Oreo at Kraft Foods. “Lots of people partake in the rituals of twisting, licking and dunking Oreo cookies in milk. Double Stuf Racing League focuses on the ‘lick’ aspect and takes Oreo to a new place in an unexpected way.”
As I noted, the campaign first started with the Manning Brothers, the two NFL quarterback stars Payton and Eli, competing against each other for the DSRL title. Next up were the Williams sisters, tennis champs Venus and Serena, who were challenging the guys in this “second sport” through a national TV ad. Viewers were encouraged to go online at whatsthesecondsport.com and create avatars that enabled them to participate in games, blogs and fan discussion groups.
Sweepstakes and instant-win prizes were also featured that gave the DSRL fans a chance to win a trip to New Orleans to participate in a “lick race” with the Manning Brothers for a $10,000 grand prize, A father/son team from Dayton, Ohio won the race in 27 seconds.
A spring contest is scheduled for this year that will include both the Mannings and the Williamses, so the program continues. Kraft is looking to bring on new talent, so who knows what sports celebrities they’ll bring on board next.
Back to the conference for now. We have Nazz Nichols from Nokia (say that 3'x fast) on next.
I hope you brought home some double stuff oreos for Kevin.
Posted by: Frances | March 17, 2009 at 09:31 AM
You know they didn't serve any Oreos at the conference at all. Now that's a marketing opportunity lost!
Posted by: Donna DeClemente | March 17, 2009 at 09:42 AM