Donna's Promo Talk

Warner's Fit-to-a-T Bra Fitting House Party Gives Women What They Want

Today is Wednesday, therefore it is again my guest blogger day over at the Lipsticking blog. I first started writing over there over a year ago and one of my first posts I wrote was this post about a really cool promotional event that Hershey's sponsored and executed with an interesting marketing firm called House Party to help launch their new Hershey's Bliss Chocolate line. Well I had to write about House Party again because I wanted to share info about this other party with the Lipsticking readers since the blog is all about marketing to women. The party is called Warner's Fit-to-a-T House Party. Here is the post for you readers as well.

House Party™ integrates actual social events that happen in the real w orld with social media in the online world. One of their parties actually consists of thousand parties on one day which take place across the country and include an exclusive brand experience at the center of the action. These specially designed parties are sponsored by a leading brand and take place in the homes of carefully selected consumer hosts who can invite their friends, family, neighbors, classmates , co-workers, whoever they wish, to experience these uniquely fun parties and the products they feature.

Warner's wanted to sponsor bra fitting parties to help support the launch of their new Invisible Bliss bra which is designed for women to wear under t-shirts. So House Party recruited 1,000 hosts for this event and also got Redbook on board as a co-sponsor.

House Party's CEO, Kitty Kolding, shared this with us the following: “The experts at Warner Bras have data that show that most women do not wear the correct bra size nor do they know how to select bras that fit them perfectly. So we worked with Warner Bras to design and deploy a national program of parties that gave women a trusted setting – the home of a close friend – in which they could learn, share and find the perfect bra. And at the same time, they had fun and shared that fun on the event website that ties all the parties together. To make it work, we did what we always do which is make a brand or product experience into an authentic, legitimately fun social gathering that delivers real value to consumers and extremely powerful marketing tools to our Fortune 500 clients.” 

HBO Promotes Season 2 of True Blood With Sweepstakes & Social Media Created by Vampires

I didn't get a chance to write a blog post yesterday because I was preparing for my daughter's graduation party which we hosted at our home. I believe it was a success and think that everyone had a good time. We were a bit anxious when some huge thunderstorms came rambling through late yesterday morning and some hail was reported. But it cleared up and ended up being a beautiful night.

I've been trying to write my Friday/Saturday posts about interactive promotions tied in with entertainment marketing since there as so many big moives released during the summer season. However, I already wrote earlier about the Transformers, Transform Your Dad, a big promotion Kmart did for Father's Day. The movie opened nationwide this past Wednesday instead of Friday and it's been way in the lead at the box office. So there really isn't another movie coming even close to it this week to report on.

What has been big this week is the start of the second season of HBO's TrueBlood which premiered last Sunday. HBO really used social media in some innovative ways to promote the return of season 2 such as creating a blog called BloodCopy which is written by true vampires and creating a microsite, The American Vampire League, which is all about protecting the rights of vampires. Then there is The Fellowship of the Sun which is the ministry created to protect their members against vampires. HBO also set up Facebook Fan Pages for each: here's the BloodCopy Fan Page, the AVL Fan Page and the one for Fellowship. Fans can follow them here on Twitter as well as various vampire character pages such as @SomniusX. Plus they have developed this BloodCopy Wiki.

HBO is running the Escape the Everyday Sweepstakes with a grand prize of $10,000 towards HBO, TV service, Internet, phone and so more courtesy of HBO. There are also instant win prizes consisting of the True Blood Season 1 DVDs, Fangtasia, Fellowship of the Sun and American Vampire League t-shirts and True Blood Logo mugs. The sweepstakes began on May 23 and ends July 3. 

To play the game you first have to choose if you want to be on the side of the mortals or the vampires. There's a viral marketing component to this as well where visitors can "Suck in Your Friends" by sending them an email post card inviting them to play or posting this widget on their Facebook page or many other social media options.

BMW's Mini teamed up with HBO with a co-branded print and digital ad campaign. Their Mini was one of several real brands being pitched to vampires. The campaign is comprised of national print, online and out-of-home outlets. The ads featuring blood-red versions of the Mini Cooper and Mini Clubman, have headlines like: "Feel the Wind in Your Fangs" and "Type GO." Digital ads ran on Yahoo, CNN, AOL, the TrueBlood home page on HBO.com, and the show's microsites.

Father's Day Photo Blog Sponsorship Giveaway

In light of Father's Day being tomorrow I'm writing this post regarding a Father's Day Blog Giveaway promotion. Now I usually don't do these sponsored posts because I write mostly to marketing folks about online promotions. But I thought that since these types of blog contests and giveaways are becoming so popular, why not see how they actually work. Plus, all of us marketing folks are consumers as well and the majority of us will be celebrating Dad's day in one way or another.

So this giveaway is sponsored by UPrinting.com who even sent me a jpeg image of their logo so I could easily include it in my post, so here it is. They are offering $250 in prize money and and a free 16"x20" Gallery Wrapped Canvas Print to the blogger that they randomly select who follows the criteria for entering. So far I've said that UPriting is the sponsor and I've included their logo. Now I have to post a photo related to Father's Day and include some captions describing it. Here goes:

This is a photo of my dad, Alfred, with me taken back in early March of this year. I went down to visit my parents who now live in the Myrtle Beach area for a long weekend and we had some beautiful weather. We're sitting out by the pool here in my sister Fran's backyard.

My father has been a hero this past year. He's been supporting my mom who has cancer and who had to go back on chemo treatment after a recent surgery to remove her gal bladder. So we're are all so grateful to my Dad for all he's been doing to help our mom and all that he will continue to do. My father has always been so strong and supportive during any major crisis in our lives. It was always the little stuff that we fretted over too much. We love you Dad!

So perhaps I'll win the top prize and get to take everyone out to dinner on my next visit down south. If not then at least my sister will hopefully show this to my Dad since he still doesn't have his own computer.

Now back to the promotion. I also have to tell you a little bit about our sponsor. UPrinting.com is a leading online provider of business cards, color brochures and mailing postcards. They started this Blog Sponsorship Program earlier this year and invited me to register, so I did. I didn't participate in their first promotion in which they gave away $100 last month. Now I wasn't going to participate in this one either, but they were persistent and sent me another email message that they were extending the deadline for Father's Day till June 29. The winner will be selected on Tuesday, June 30th, so wish me luck. The next one is a Summer Photo Contest, so stay tuned for that.

You can learn more about UPrinting and their Blog Sponsorship Program on their UPrinting Blog. They wrote that they weren't sure at first how bloggers would react, "but that all changed during March and April. Applications from those that had participated in our competitions and promotions began streaming in at an alarming rate." So if you're a blogger and interested in registering to participate in their Blog Sponsorship program you can here.

My fellow Kodak friends should take note of this promotion. Hopefull they'll see it posted on my Facebook page! Many other brands are starting to participate in social media marketing programs like this for bloggers. If anyone is interested in doing something like this please contact me. We have a great network of women bloggers and readers you can tap into through the Lip-Sticking.com network. And again, a Happy Father's Day to my Dad and to my husband, Kevin, and all you dads!

Jeff Hayzlett, Kodak's CMO, Talks About Social Media to Benefit the Rochester Ad Council

I've now been a guest blogger for Lip-sticking.com for the past nine months and have been contributing a post every other Wednesday. Well, this week I started my weekly schedule which will now consist of every Wednesday, with maybe a few exceptions here and there. I'm very honored to be one of the five women bloggers on this site and looking forward to continuing my contribution to this girlfriend community in which we cover topics on marketing to women including promotional and social media campaigns targeted to women.

Today was the annual luncheon of the Rochester Advertising Council which I attended as I have done for many years so my blog post on Lip-sticking was about this event. The Rochester Ad Council is an impressive organization unlike any other local Ad Council in the country. It connects many of the local non-profits to us marketing and communication professionals who donate our time and talents to help them with their marketing efforts. This annual luncheon is the organization's biggest fund raiser and has brought in some notable speakers in the past, such as the Domestic Diva herself, Martha Stewart who visited here two years ago as well as Rochester's Mayor, Bob Duffy who spoke last year.

This year's keynote speaker was Jeff Hayzlett, CMO and VP of Eastman Kodak Company who spoke about Kodak and Social Media. You can continue reading about Jeff's presentation here on Lip-sticking in which he totally engaged the audience very much.

I hope you all continue to follow me both here and on Lip-sticking and please feel free to contribute at either blog. I thank you for your continued support.

Will Twitter Change Marketing? Some Local Businesses Think So After Their Successful Twitter Promotions

There has been so much talk about Twitter lately that there isn't a day that goes by were you don't read someone's point of view about the micro-blogging site. Today there was quite a few articles that I tweeted about so I thought I share them with you here.

First there was this commentary on Media Post's Online Media Daily blog written by Will Akerlof who's president of Liquid Advertising Inc., a marketing agency based in Venice, California. Will doesn't seem to think that Twitter will really change marketing and he started off his post with the following "A couple of years from now, we'll look at Twitter as another online flash in the pan that the press and digerati got all excited about until they found the next new thing." Hmmm...he thinks we'll soon be embarrassed to be tweeting right now since all of us internet marketing folks are really just talking to each other.

Another point that Will makes is that Twitter is not particularly young or hip. In the March 2009 Nielsen Netview, Twitter has an index of 40 against the demographic of kids 12-17, and below-average index against full-time students. The highest indexing demographic group on Twitter is Males 35-49 (167). Well Twitter is still fairly new and if you read my post on the Digital Moms Survey that I wrote last week it shows just how powerful social media is with women who are the major purchasers online. What influences them the most? Product recommendations made on social networks and from bloggers. Now most bloggers today are not teens or full-time students. They may have started out being predominately male but now have shifted to include many women with "mommy bloggers" being a major force.

So you can read Will's post which he goes on to make other points to help reinforce his case that Twitter is mainly just a fad along with the many comments from those adding their perspectives. So yes, I do agree with Will in a way. Twitter will not change marketing. I still believe in the basic principals that apply to marketing and it's the way you use the social media tools that we have at our disposal today that can help marketers succeed or fail.

It's All About Giving Consumers Value and Values - John Gerzema & The Brand Bubble from SES NY

Today I was the guest blogger at Lipsticking and I wrote a post about SES NY which I promised I'd cover. So I'm posting it here as well since I don't want you to miss it. It's a long one, but a good one. 

What I haven't written about yet and wanted to cover today was the Thursday morning Keynote Speaker, John Gerzema, author of The Brand Bubble: The looming crisis in brand value and how to avoid it. You can actually download his "Calamity" presentation here which I've included a copy of the first slide below. Now since this was the third and final day of the conference, the Grand Ballroom at the NY Hilton was a bit sparser than during Day 1's Opening Keynote by Guy Kawasaki, but I believe those of us that were there were pleasantly pleased with the content.

John started us off on some very discouraging stats about our current state of the economy which he calls "The New Fear Economy". So I started wondering where this was going. Conferences are supposed to be inspirational, right?

Reality is we're already in our 18th month of a recession. Unemployment is the highest in 25 years with the three straight months of over 600,000 jobs lost in this country. We’ve seen $36 trillion loss worldwide. House values have eroded. Equity markets are down. National debt is way up. Detroit is going bankrupt. Bank lending is down and credit card exposure is the new bubble.

Social Media Campaign Works to Raise Awareness of Violence Against Women

Today was again my day to guest blog over at Lipsticking.com. I took the opportunity to write a follow-up on the The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and their Say NO To Violence Against Women. I'm a bit disappointed with the initial response that I received to support this cause from both blogs, so I'm trying again.

In my new post on Lipsticking I have included some exclusive videos of Goodwill Ambassador Nicole Kidman speaking about the campaign. We only have a couple of weeks left for them to meet their goal. So, RocketXL, the social media agency working on this campaign, is really pushing to get this message spread through the blogoshphere and via social networks. So please check out this post and add your voice today to this cause. Here's the widget again.

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.

Looking Forward to PMA's Digital Marketing Summit

Next week I'll be heading down to New York City to attend PMA's first annual Digital Marketing Summit. I'm looking forward to it since I haven't been to any type of conference or workshop since last April when I attended PMA's Annual Integrated Marketing Conference in Chicago which I thought was great.

This conference titled, Digital Marketing Fully Integrated, brings together the country's leading digital marketers including Advertising Age's top 3 “Digital Marketers of the Year” that include Unilever, AKQA and Google, plus Promo's 2008 Agency of the Year, Digitas, which I wrote about here. It's being held at Bridgewaters at the South Street Seaport on Monday, September 8th.

The Olympic Games Have Begun - Are you Watching?

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games got off to a spectacular start.  I stayed up till midnight on Friday night to see the end of the recorded version of the opening ceremonies that NBC broadcast. It was really cool the way they lifted Li Ning, former Olympic gymnast for China, to the top of the Beijing National Stadium ("The Birds Nest") and had him appear to be running on air with the Olympic torch to light the cauldron. 

It appears that the opening ceremonies that the Chinese hosted for the world were the most spectacular to date and included an amazing blend of human talent combined with technology. I found it really hard to pull away from watching the event on TV...even the commercials. While the Olympic Opening Ceremony normally doesn't receive the same hype for TV ads as the Super Bowl does, there were some really great ads that ran during the broadcast.

One of my favorite ads was from McDonald's featuring children's soccer. It didn't have any words, just a musical score with very strong expressions coming from the "losing team" and well as the "winning team".  It showed how the kids' expressions changed dramatically once the food showed up... for the losing team of course. It reminded me of when my daughters were young and going to McDonald's was such a treat. In fact one of my daughter's first words were "french fries" (which actually sounded like "fra-fras") and she would yell that out whenever we passed the Golden Arches.

I'm looking forward to watching some of the events tonight. I read that the U.S. already got it's first Gold Medal - in Fencing. The time difference is a little confusing. We'll get to watch some live meets tonight, Saturday evening, which are actually taking place Sunday morning in Beijing. That's why it's so important to be able to watch what you want, when you want. NBC is scheduled to have over 2.200 hours of event coverage online this year. That's pretty cool, even though there has been some criticism for not giving viewers more choice. Check out this article from Silicon Alley Insider that lists some of the ways NBC could have really utilized Web 2.0 in their strategy.

Another interesting bit of research that I read in this Adotas article is that teens are not that into the Games. I have two teenager daughters who are so busy with what's going in their own lives that they really don't appear interested at all in the Olympics. They may have been more I think if Abby Wambach was there playing with the U.S. Soccer Team. Abby is a graduate of Our Lady of Mercy High School here in Rochester, where both my girls are from. The team did pretty well without Abby today. The study on teens was done by Harris Interactive which states that less than half, 43%, expressed any interest in the Olympics.

I've also been trying to keep up with Jenny and Tom who are blogging on Kodak's blog, A Thousand Words, from Beijing. I've also been able to follow Jenny on Twitter. It appears to be an experience of a lifetime for her so far. She writes in her first post from Beijing about how "tall" she thought all the Chinese women were until she noticed the platform shoes they wear. Jenny took this photo of the shoes along with some other great photos of the Opening Ceremonies you just have to check out.

Well I just have to admit that these Olympic Games have brought back for me at least a sense of patriotism and if anything helps make the world seem like a smaller place. I've learned so much already about China and its people. It's hard to comprehend how big of a country it is ....over 1.3 billion people living in a country on the other side of the world from us Americans. Hopefully we'll get to know them and they'll get to know us a little better. Now wouldn't that be be a great result of these games?