Donna's Promo Talk

McDonald's The Lost Ring Promotes the 2008 Olympics

I got to hear Neil Golden, CMO of McDonald’s USA, review with us their strategy of concentrating on their menu and creating products based on customer’s need into what he called “the strongest turnaround in business history.” Neil was another of the top-notched speakers that PMA offered us this year at their Annual Integrated Marketing Conference held in Chicago last week.

Neil also told us that McDonald's isn't doing "Promotions" anymore. Wait a minute, what was that? Instead he said they are concentrating on PROMOTION that adds attention and has relevance to their long-term brands. He went through and mentioned a few of the "Promotion" programs that they've been focused on.

The Lost Ring is a new program aimed at promoting the McDonald's brand and their partnership with the International Olympic Committee. It's an alternative reality game (ARG) which is sponsored by both in anticipation of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing. The game was officially launched last month after some buzz was first created online through a viral marketing push that didn't have the sponsors' names associated with it. Neil said that the goal of the promotion is to tap into the existing equity McDonald's has with the Olympics as well as the whole social networking trend in order to join forces online globally.

The game is built around the fictional concept that more than 2,000 years ago an Olympic sport was lost to history and that now, five Olympic-caliber athletes have turned up in corn fields around the world, amnesiac but sure they've been tasked with some great mission.

To play the game you have to visit The Lost Ring.com where you first watch a trailer that's been created at the same high quality of most theatrical film releases. Neil told us that 1.5 million people have viewed the video to date and they currently have over 200,000 active gamers coming from all 119 countries that McDonald's does business in.

What I didn't realize is that Jane McGonigal is behind the creation of this game. Jane describes herself as a game designer, a games researcher, and a future forecaster. Her bio on her blog, Avant Game, says "I make games that give a damn". Check out her blog post here where you can learn much more about Jane, how to play this game as well as how it came about.

Anyhow, I first met Jane last year while attending the Interactive Promotions summit that ePrize sponsored in Las Vegas. Jane was one of the keynote speakers and spoke about her game philosophy and the World Without Oil game she was working on then. It was a very intriguing presentation which I wrote a post here about her as well as the rest of the conference.

Neil also did tell us that McDonald's Monopoly Game will indeed be back this fall and they continue to enhance its relevance to the brand each year and bring in some new partners. Last year they showcased the previous year's winner in order to create awareness that people do actually win these games. We'll have to wait on what new enhancements they'll add to this year's interactive promotion.

Back to The Lost Ring, now knowing that Jane is behind this game, I'm very eager to find the time to play it. If anyone has experienced the game please let us know if "You're Lovin it" or not. You're welcome to leave any of your thoughts in the comments section here. Also if you're interested, here's a Wiki that's been created that you can get some additional pointers on as well.

Fred Claus Naughty or Nice Giveaway Promotes Movie, Time Warner and Circuit City

The holiday season is gone into full swing this week now that Thanksgiving is behind us. As promised, I'm trying to cover as many holiday interactive promotions in this blog as I can between now and Christmas. Since today's the start of one of our holiday weekends, I thought I'd blog about an interactive promotion that falls into the entertainment marketing category... The Fred Claus Naughty or Nice Giveaway.

Time Warner Cable and sister company Warner Bros. Pictures have partnered to promote the movie FRED CLAUS which was released in theaters back on Nov. 8th. It stars Paul Giamatti playing Santa and Vince Vaughn as his bad brother Fred. These are some downloads and "buddy Icons" I found on the official website.  The interactive promotion includes a microsite with games based on the film, vignettes of the movie plus a sweepstakes offering consumers a chance to win weekly prizes including a $10,000 home theater system provided by Circuit City. Instant-win prizes include Road Runner mouse pads, Aqua computer mouses, and a notepad.

When you first visit the microsite the elf encourages you to register which automatically enters you in the sweepstakes. The entry form includes some additional questions such as "Are you a Time-Warner customer?", "What services do you have?", "Do you have a HDTV?" and "Have you ever watched shows or movies On-Demand?" which enables the sponsors to gather consumer data. The last question requests separate opt-ins for future emails and offers to be sent from Time Warner, Road Runner, Intel and Circuit City. So they are definitely using the power of online sweepstakes to build their database and start a dialog with these consumers based on their answers.

I didn't win the instant prize today, but I can come back every day now till the promotional period ends on January 3rd and try again. I am entered in the sweepstakes for a chance at the grand prize which is the $10,000 Circuit City home theater system as well as the weekly prize which this week happens to be an Intel powered laptop.

There are also ways to gain additional entries into both the weekly and grand prize drawings by "exploring the environment" and playing the games. Each week features a different game with this week being the North Pole. When you play the game you get an additional entry plus there are bonus entries hidden in the game. I came across some dancing elves that were kinda a scary looking.

Besides the games, visitors can send holiday e-cards and choose between a "Naughty" or "Nice" greeting. A drop-down menu provides additional word choices that comprise the final message. This makes up the viral marketing component of the campaign.

Visitors to the microsite can also view Fred Claus movie clips and trailers. The movie has gotten so-so reviews with Vince Vaughn being Vince Vaughn (naughty) and Paul Giamatti (nice) actually bringing some talent to the screen. However, whatever you think about the movie, this promotional campaign appears to be right on target.

Games and Prizes Grow Microsoft's Live Search Share

MSN and Microsoft Live's U.S. search query volume rose 67% from May to June and 48% over a year ago according to Internet metrics company, Compete, Inc. The main key to this success they are saying has to do with a promotion that gives its users prizes!

A good portion of the new searches are coming from The Live Search Club where visitors can play games and get points which can then be redeemed for Microsoft products. It's sorta of like the old arcade games where you collect tickets and hand them in for cheap prizes, but in this case the prizes have some value. To get the points, visitors have to search with Live in playing the games.

Currently they have created 6 different games. One is called Flexicon, a crossword challenge where you test your skills with four different crossword puzzles that overlap each other. One long answer, the "Flexicon" connects all four puzzles. Another game is Chicktionary in which you are matched up against seven hens who really know their alphabet.  You have to peck out as many words as possible to fill up the Chicktionary word rack.

Some of the smaller prizes include ringtones, song downloads, magazines, digital headphones, earbuds, tee-shirts, flash drives, movie passes. Larger prizes include X-box games and accessories all the way up to the Xbox 360 Pro Console, Microsoft's new Vista operating system and Microsoft Zune. There's even a leaderboard where players can view the scores of others for each game along with a community section that informs you of what prizes that they have redeemed.

So far they have been able to take away about 5% of market share mostly from Google. "If Microsoft can actually leverage this traffic to Club.live into actual search users and string together a few more months like this, they could really threaten Google's top spot," said Steve Willis, a Compete analyst who wrote about this on the Compete blog. Willis said that Club.live.com wasn't generating noticeable traffic in April. In May, Compete tracked some 330,000 unique visitors at that site. In June, that number had risen to 3 million unique visitors.

Microsoft Live's tagline is "Changing the Game So Everyone Wins!" It just goes to support that fact that interactive promotions that provide the right prize incentive to their target audience can motivate and change people's behavior. So, will the trend continue? We'll have to wait and see the numbers for July.