Donna's Promo Talk

Insights on Interactive Promotions from ePrize CEO

The post I wrote earlier this week entitled "Interactive Promotions Together with Blogs Create a Winning Combination" speaks about the amazing growth we've witness over the past year in both interactive promotions and the blogosphere. My post goes on to say that perhaps in 2008 we'll start to see more social media vehicles, especially blogs, integrating with interactive promotions. Personally I'm excited about this since these are two areas that are specialties of mine.

One way to measure the growth of interactive promotions is to look at how well the interactive agencies are doing. Since marketers are being pressed more then ever to justify ROI for their advertising spend they are turning to online and interactive marketing strategies which can provide definitive results.

Last week ePrize, the industry leader, announced their 2007 sales results in which they saw a 38-percent growth in net sales to $49.6 million. On top of that they added 174 new clients and launched 1,366 promotions nationwide last year, nearly 70-percent more promotions than they launched in 2006. Just prior to releasing their sales numbers ePrize announced their ToyBox™ 2.0 Software-as-a-Service offering.

With these two recent announcements back to back I was able to obtain a briefing with ePrize founder and CEO Josh Linkner. I asked Josh a few questions about the industry and where his company is going which I'm happy to be able to share with you here.

Donna: Since ePrize's sales last year resulted in a 38% growth for the company, what’s going to drive your growth this year and what do you see as some of the biggest trends going forward into 2008?

Josh: 2008 will be another record year for ePrize. We see our innovation as the dictator of all trends in the interactive promotion industry. Our ToyBox™ 2.0 software-as-a-service offering will be a significant revenue generator for ePrize. We refuse to rest on our laurels and will continue to pursue new technological breakthroughs to keep ahead of trends. 

Donna: Are clients asking for more user-generated contests, interactive instant win games, traditional online sweepstakes, or something new?

Josh: We have found clients are not all asking for one thing. That’s one of the reasons we developed ToyBox 2.0. We know through experience that different types of interactive promotions deliver different results. For example, if a client is looking to increase site visits, we’ve found advergames results in the most frequency. ToyBox 2.0 is that virtual “toy box” that allows marketers to find the perfect solution for the specific marketing objective.

Donna: Can you elaborate a little more on what you mean by referring to ToyBox 2.0 as the “Intel Inside"?

Josh:  ToyBox 2.0 has been designed and positioned for use and re-selling to third-parties as the paramount software-as-a-service of interactive promotions. No one else can offer a service like this and we plan to maintain our position on the leading edge of innovation and further increase this margin by consistently producing first-class advancements to make ToyBox 2.0 the premium interactive promotion software. Our technology was developed based on knowledge gained by creating more than 4,000 interactive promotions. We’ve found a way to channel those best practices into this proven software.  Like Intel Inside defined the important role of the microprocessor for consumers, ToyBox 2.0 defines the importance of the technology on the back end of promotions that ensure a smooth promotion flow, secure data capturing and no downtime for marketers. 

Donna: Will ToyBox 2.0 include different modules to choose from such as a sweepstakes, a UGC contest and an instant-win game component?

Josh: Yes, all of the above. We expect incremental updates including more sophisticated technology for highly targeted campaigns to address client interests and needs. We will provide these upgrades, including new products, features and services every 90 days.

Donna: How much growth does ePrize expect to see integrating SMS into the mix as a method of entry?

Josh: More than half of our clients have expressed some level of interest in SMS and mobile promotions, but we’re finding that less than 10 percent actually execute and invest in these types of promotional campaigns. Beyond simple SMS, mobile promotions will grow when the consumer adoption of the technology required to support it hits a critical mass. 

Donna: Lastly, How’s Caffeine doing and what plans do you have going forward for this service? (You can read more information about Caffeine in this post that I wrote back on April 1st of last year shortly after it launched.)

Josh: Caffeine has been highly successful. We’re now broadening our range with this tool and working with Dell and a major financial institution to offer Caffeine to their small business customers.

Thanks Josh for your input and for sharing your thoughts and insights with us. We'll be looking forward to seeing some of the new promotions that will be built on the Toy Box 2.0 software platform as well as how this new business model is accepted within the industry. I'm very interested to learn more myself as a prospective third party reseller. Keep the innovations coming.

PROMO Live Day Two Overview

Well I was very glad that I made it over to Navy Pier in time this morning to hear Jim McCafferty's session on day two of the PromoLive Promotional Marketing Event. I was however a few minutes late and heard that I just missed the beach balls being bounced around the room. Jim was very entertaining and did get the group pumped up for the day with his "Powering Up Your Creative" presentation that he gave without the use of a PowerPoint!

Jim, President and CEO of JMP Creative, gave us this advice to help increase our creativity..."think inside another box, not out of the box". He gave us some tools as well as examples of what he uses to help his team come up with great ideas. Here's a few of them:

• IdeaFisher - Software program designed to speed up the creative process by working on principles of association and memory retrieval.
• Masterwriter - Songwriting software that helps with rhyming components and ideal for creating taglines.
• Handwrite the objective on a piece of paper 3x's before you start any ideation session.
• Collect images of things that are cool, unique and unusual and archive them into categories. Put them on your iPod to review anywhere, anytime.
• Do the same for really cool videos and keep track of their links.

Jim shared with us many images that he's collected to help get our creative juices going. In summary he advised us to really look at projects in a totally different way in order to get people talking about them and to help stay competitive today.

We were treated to more of Jim later in the afternoon when he shared with us his "Virtual Slide Show" which consisted of some very famous viral video campaigns, including a look again at Eepybird and the Diet Coke/Mentos fountain experiment. This session also included a brief Viral Program 101 course which I'll have to write about in it's own post. Jim really did give us all some great take-ways for the day. As they say, if you learn one or two things and walk away with one good idea, then the conference was worth the time and money.

Another session I really enjoyed was called Social Media: Evolution to Execution which was a panel comprised of four unique marketers each with their own blog. Again I'll have to devote a separate post to this session since it really crystallized everything that I've learned sine I've started blogging. For now I just have to share the story Herb Sawyer,the panel moderator from Carmichael Lynch Spong, told us about his mom from Iowa that "really scares him sometimes". Here's a women he told us that can't program her own VCR, but does goes online occasionally using a dial-up connection. She commented on a blog not knowing that "Give us your thoughts here" had entered her in the blogosphere.

I ended the day listening some more to Daniel Levine, founder of Avant-Guide, talk about "The 5 Rules of Cool" and showing us some great examples of brands that innovated to be cool. I got a chance to chat with him after the session since it was the last one of the conference and asked him about what he sees as the top cultural trends that marketers should be watching for today. More to come on this as well.

So I'm really interested in hearing from those of you that attended to hear your thoughts about the event. I got a chance to speak to several people during the breaks and I heard many different comments both positives and negatives. I can say that the conference was lacking in the presence of the big name brands that normally attract attendees as well as sponsors. But what it lacked there I think it made it up by having experts from various agencies and service providers who gave some very practical, open and honest advice and were very accessible to speak with throughout the event.

I'll continue to post on this event and provide more details. I would love to hear from those that attended as well as those that didn't who may have some questions or may be able to provide additional input to these topics. Thanks to all who put on the event as well as those that shared their thoughts and experiences with us.   

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.

Beck Besecker on Innovation and Interactive Promotions

"Never innovate to compete, innovate to change the rules of the game"
- David Adeife

Beck Besecker, SVP of Innovation for Catalina Marketing started off the morning keynote on day two of the Interactive Promotion Summit last Tuesday using this famous quote.

Beck's discussion first focused on the past lessons in innovation in order to help us look at the future. He shared with us a video that was created by Philco-Ford in 1969 that described it's vision of the future of technology. That future was 1999. We all at the conference, especially those of us that can remember 1969, got a good laugh at some of the predications in this video that have not come to be and others that are somewhat similar, but not quite the same as what we have to day.

So, I looked on YouTube for this video since I really wanted to see it again, but couldn't find it. I then tried Google and came up with this website, ICP 50th Anniversary. So, those who'd like to see it again or share it, here it is. Beck was good enough to edit it for us, and the video on this site, while it has a short version, is still almost 22 minutes. As Beck said to us, if you can get by the "Planet of the Apes" style music and the 60's hairdos, it's quite interesting.

In reviewing the past to look at the future, Beck pointed out where some of the biggest innovations in history didn't come from. Here's a few of them:

• The browser didn't come from Microsoft
• The refrigerator didn't come from icebox makers
• The light bulb didn't come from candle maker
• The automobile didn't come from wagon makers

Makes you think and try to guess at what other innovations are happening today or will happen soon that aren't coming from the current leaders in their industry.

Beck then gave us his Innovation Tips which include the following:

• Find a niche and be the expert
• Don't shop your ideas...build a plan that's at least 80% complete
• Find a champion and a few soul mates
• Put people in the customer experience
• Build credibility with incremental innovation
• Expect strong resistance
• Know the financial cold
• Prototype, release and learn

In pulling from his expertise from Catalina and in promotions he spoke about his predictions on mobile couponing.

1. First successes will will be in specialty retail and casual dining

• Currently 18 months away for retailers such as Applebees and Bed Bath and Beyond
• It will be cost effective based on these retailers' margins
• Fraud issue will be limited and viral will be encouraged

2. Grocery, Drug and Mass channels will take over five years

• Checkout experience will delay use
• Daily purchases will gain first acceptance, i.e. tobacco
• Will need a significant industry investment

Behavior based marketing is the next big opportunity and Catalina Marketing, a leader in this area, claims to leverage actual shopper purchase behavior to reach consumers at the right time with the right message - wherever the product is sold. They have teamed up with ePrize, the lead sponsor of this conference, to help drive results in this area. You can visit Catalina Interactive to view the demo on this new technology and learn more about it.            

Beck ended on this famous quote from Alan C. Kay, a computer scientist who was with the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and part of the inventions that Apple ended up developing into the first Macintosh Computers: 

"The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Invent it". So, let us know what your predictions are.