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

Marketing During the Super Bowl is a No-Brainer for Many Brands

By Guest Blogger, Dave Thomas, Online Content Editor for business.com

While it’s no surprise that advertisements during the Super Bowl cost big dollars, that hasn’t stopped many companies from opening up their checkbooks to market their wares.

Recent reports note that NBC, this year’s host for the Feb. 5 event in Indianapolis, sold its entire allotment of commercial airtime for the game before Thanksgiving 2011, having a waiting list to boot.

According to the network, slots are still open during NBC's pregame show, and those on the waiting list for the Super Bowl will have an opportunity to advertise if other companies forfeit their slots.

So, how much does an ad cost when more than 100 million people tune in to watch the AFC and NFC battle next month?

The average cost for a 30-second spot in 2012 is $3.5 million, with some time slots leading advertisers to spend as much as $4 million. The bottom line is you better have a sizeable amount of cash to spend if you want to get noticed on Super Bowl Sunday during the year’s most watched sporting event.

When you break down the marketing efforts of advertisers and NBC for that matter, at a $3.5 million average, the 70 commercials that appear during the game would lead to $245 million in gross revenue. When you take away the ad agency commission, NBC would take in just over $208 million when all is said and done.

There are also six commercials scheduled for halftime, along with a plethora of them slated to run in the nauseating six hours of pregame hype.

As a spokesperson for the sales and marketing team with the NBC Sports Group noted, “We should shatter all prior records for that day.”

As many marketing and sales pros can attest to, it isn’t just the televisions sets where people will be exposed to advertisements. The network is also selling spots on its live streamed broadcast of the game and on Super Bowl-related programming to be broadcast on the NBC Sports Network.

Among the companies planning to market their products during the game next month are Volkswagen, General Motors, Toyota, Dannon, Century 21, GoDaddy.com, and Bridgestone.

While most small businesses will never get the chance to market their products during an event such as the Super Bowl, there are lessons to be learned from the experience. Among them are:

• Always be sure to reinforce your brand and/or business. While some Super Bowl messages are cute and funny, the brand sometimes gets lost in the message. Marketers want consumers to remember who they are whether it is a 30-second spot or a 60-second one. Make sure you don’t leave people guessing as to what your message is;
• Logos, web addresses, phone numbers, etc. are essential. It is important when marketing to make sure consumers have the ability to reach out to you. You can have the best product in the world, but without a way for people to reach you, what good is it? Don’t make consumers have to work to find you;
• Redefine the targeted audience – This is why surveys, reports, metrics etc. are important. Make sure you are marketing to the right demographics so that your money is well spent. If your primary market is young women, don’t spend your time marketing to middle age men in hopes that they will pass the details along to their younger offspring.

You may not be advertising during the biggest television spectacle of the year, but that doesn’t mean your marketing efforts are worthless.

Score a touchdown with the right marketing campaigns, which begin with kicking off in the right direction.

Dave Thomas, who covers among other items starting a small business and business proposals, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.

Dunkin' Donuts: Branding in a "Hole" New Light

Did you know that this past Friday was National Donut Day? Well I learned that National Donut Day is held on the first Friday of June and that I could have gotten a free donut just by visiting any Dunkin' Donuts location in the U.S.

I didn't get my free donut, but instead I was treated to a great presentation by Jon Luther, Exectutive Chairman of Dunkin' Brands at the Ad Council of Rochester's Annual Luncheon. All present, some 400 of us, did get to take home some small packets of Dunkin' Donuts coffee and helped both the Ad Council and Dunkin Brands celebrate their 60th birthday.

Dunkin' Brands had over $7.2 billion in sales in 2009 and served over a billion cups of coffee worldwide. Did you also know that they are the #1 coffee in the world, #1 iced coffee, #1 flavored coffee as well as #1 in bagels, muffins and donuts? Jon shared those impressive figures with us and I'm sure they were no exaggeration.

Jon also told us that even though they are now located in 35 countries, their main strategy over time is to take Dunkin' Brands national in the United States. He showed us a map of the U.S. with many little pink dots on it to represent Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin & Robbins franchised stores, most that are located east of the Mississippi accept for a scattered few.

So to achieve this goal they knew that had to clearly transform Dunkin' Brands to not only be about donuts, but much more. They started out by reviewing their customer insights and defining their attributes. They found that there were definitely two distinct tribes of coffee fans in the country, those extremely loyal to the Dunkin' Donuts brand and the other "green" tribe. However they also found that there were many people "on the fence" and they want these people to come over to the Dunkin' tribe.

Branding 101 - How we further developed the Lip-sticking Brand

As I mentioned in my New Year's Day post, we launched The Lip-sticking Society along with a new look for the Lip-sticking blog. Yvonne DiVita, the founder of the blog, followed up the following day with this great post, Creating the Lip-sticking Society, where she wrote about why we did it and part of the how. So I promised to follow up on my first guest blogging day of the new year and elaborate a little more on "the how" and provide some further insights into why we did what we did from a brand perspective.

I've always thought the term Lip-sticking was very unique and loved the graphic logo that Yvonne had created for the blog. So I encouraged her to seriously consider branding and trademarking it. What I learned early in my career about trademarks is that they need to be adjectives, not nouns. A noun should always follow the brand. So in this case we've added the word "blog" and officially changed the name to The Lip-sticking Blog. We now have launched a new expanded site which we have named The Lip-sticking Society. Also in development is Lip-sticking the Book, which will include excerpts from the blog.

Happy New Year....Welcome 2010 and The Lip-sticking Society

Happy New Year everyone. We have now started not just a new year, but a new decade! I'm really looking forward to 2010 and have some very exciting things that I'm working on that I want to tell you about.

First off today we launched the new look for the Lip-sticking blog and announced the launch of The Lip-sticking Society. As many of my readers know I am one of the five women bloggers who writes for the Lip-sticking blog which was originally created by Yvonne DiVita back in 2004. I have been working with Yvonne behind the scenes during the second half of 2009 to expand the Lip-sticking brand and The Lipsticking Society is a result of this. This is, however, just the beginning and we have quite a bit more work to do.

Here's what Yvonne had to say on the blog this morning:

Welcome to The Lip-sticking Blog, an integral part of The Lip-sticking Society. Starting this year, we're expanding our reach to include services, advertising, and a Learning Center where we will offer concrete, actionable articles and webinars and content small business owners can use to build a stronger, more successful business this year.

Take a moment to visit The Lip-sticking Society's homepage and tell us what you think. We encourage feedback and participation. Let us help you make 2010 a star-studded year of amazing success.

So please give me your comments here about what you think of the new Lip-sticking site and what you'd like to see on it. I'm in charge of marketing and sales for the Lip-sticking Society and we are seeking sponsors and advertisers, so if you or your clients want to reach a very influential group of women, please contact me.

I'll also be writing about some other new exciting projects that I'm involved in, so please stay tuned and thanks again for being part of Donna's Promo Talk.

Recession Marketing to Moms - Tips & Insights

Today was again my guest blogging gig at Lipsticking.com. Here's the post:

Lately we've all been seeing many marketing messages aimed at us women that are embracing the fact that we are in a recession. Some are good, some not so great. If you now Google the term "recession marketing" you've find quite a few recent articles on the topic as well as some paid "sponsored" ads from those jumping on the bandwagon as well. 

I wrote about this marketing trend last month in this post here which was about giving value for consumers as well as values! The recession today is affecting most people, but specifically women with children, no matter what age their kids are. Young children are just not in tune with the economic concerns of today even though moms are trying to teach them. And teenagers, well there teenagers, and even though they are aware of what's going on, the world still revolves around them and they "need" many things. 

So one thing moms today are doing is seeking more products that are durable. We need to make things last and brands and companies that are offering this are experiencing growth. This image is an example of "brands that last" which I've included courtesy of John Gerzema, author of  "The Brand Bubble".

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.

Register for PROMOLive's Interactive Marketing Online Conference Tommorrow

I'm going to take a short break today from writing about interactive holiday promotions to tell you about a free Interactive Marketing Online Conference that's taking place tomorrow, December 13th. PROMO Live, in association with Penton Marketing Media Group, publishers of PROMO Magazine, are sponsoring for the first time ever this virtual conference.

This full schedule provides best practices and thought leadership in 5 cutting-edge areas of interactive marketing --- consumer generated, mobile, games and contests, web, and email. Here's the agenda:

10:30 - A keynote presentation kicks off the conference with Karla Lacey, Director of Integrated Marketing Communications, Strategy & Planning, Cisco Systems. Karla's talk is entitled: The Customer Grows Up - Marketing in the Interactive World

11:00 - The Do's and Dont's in Developing, Launching & Marketing Online Games, Contests and Sweeps -  Sponsored by Bossdev

12:00 - CtoC Marketing (consumer generated marketing)

1:00 - Email for Brand Marketers - Sponsored by Campaigner

2:00 - Interactive Bonding ---- are you 365?

3:00 - Mobile-izing Your Brand

Each session is 45 minutes and you can click on each link above to read more details on each and to register. One registration allows you to attend all or just one session for free and also lets you come back any time through March of 2008 to view them.

So don't miss out. If you can't spare the day tomorrow, at least register and sit in on one session and come back later, maybe over the holidays when things slow down, and listen to some of the other sessions. Also, if you do attend, please feel free to comment here at let me know what you think. The organizers of the event are looking for feedback and would like to do more of these in the future, so let us know how you liked it, or didn't like it.

And don't forget...if want or need advice on developing and launching online games, contests and sweeps, please remember to contact me. That is by the way what I specialize in as well.

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.

I'll be Blogging at PROMOLIVE! in Chicago

PROMO Magazine is again holding it's annual promotional marketing conference which has been at the Navy Pier in Chicago since I can remember. This year it's taking place a little earlier than normal, September 17-19th, and it's been named PROMOLive!, the Promotional Marketing Event for Brand and Agency Marketers.

I'm having a hard time remembering the first PROMO event that I attended (which tends to happen more and more after you hit a certain age) but I can tell you that it was when the magazine was still owned by a small, private publishing company and run like a family business. The industry has certainly changed since then. Over the years I've attended as an attendee, an exhibitor, a speaker, a workshop participant and some years all of the above. This year however I'm very excited since I'll be attending as a blogger covering the event here on Donna's Promo Talk along with of course the editors from PROMO Magazine reporting via PROMO Xtra.

Ideas Take Center Stage for this year's event which promises new ideas for both brand and agency marketers to attract and engage their audiences. The Center Stage Forums will kick off in the mornings of each conference day with "PROMO Aloud: The Innovation Interviews" on Day 1 hosted by Daniel Levine, executive Director of Avant-Guide and with "Powering Up Your Creative" on Day 2 from Jim McCafferty, President & CEO of JMP Creative. I'll be writing more about these two guys and their companies over the next couple of weeks leading up to the event.

Each afternoon will feature a SPOTLIGHT Session focusing on trends. Day 1 Spotlight is PROMO's Annual Industry Trends Results which the editorial team will review the findings from PROMO's annual report which will be a first at this event. Day 2 Spotlight is on Virtual Worlds where Brent Arslaner from Unisfair, a leading virtual event solution provider, will discuss this growing marketing trend.

In between these sessions are break-outs to choose from with marketing subjects including: Ideation: Experiential; Social Media; Guerilla; Sponsorship; Loyalty; Interactive; Measurement & Metrics; At Retail. There is an area to meet with exhibitors called "The Hub" where you can also review case study demos from a selection to choose from. The Hub also serves as the networking/mingling/schmoozing/eating/drinking spot.

And of course an event like this wouldn't be complete without giving out some awards...PROMO's PRO Awards 2007 will be awarded on the evening of September 18th at a party in the Grand Ballroom that includes food, drinks, music and the awards presentation. All the finalists will be presented and the winners announced for each of the 22 categories. Two new categories have been added this year which are; Best Use of Consumer-Generated-Content and Best Use of Targeted Direct Mail or eMail. All the finalists will also be showcased in "The Hub" area to view anytime during the event.

Now what's new this year is a special mircosite that's been built called ThePromoEvent.com. On this site you can not only review the detailed schedule and registration information, but also read about all the speakers and their bios and have the opportunity to send them a message. Plus they've created a PROMOLive 2007 Blog which the speakers have been given access to post. There's currently a post by Daniel Levine from an interview with Michael Stipe, frontman for the band R.E.M., one of my all-time favorites. The developers of the Microsite are still in the process of getting me set up to have access so that I can post to this blog as well and they've also promised to include a link to Donna's Promo Talk. So, I'll keep you informed as we move forward.

I'm not only looking forward to covering all these great topics at the event, but I'm also  excited about reconnecting with many people in the industry that I've know over the years as well as hopefully meeting many new people. So if you are planning to attend, please let me know and I'd love to meet up with you sometime over the course of the event.  And, if you can't make it let me know what topic or session you are specifically interested in and I'll try and cover it. Between now and then I plan on trying to connect with some of the speakers in order to give you a little more perspective on who they are and their backgrounds. So, please plan on visiting  back to my blog often, or better yet, subscribe so you don't miss out.