Donna's Promo Talk

Election Day Gives Us Free Coffee, Donuts, Ice Cream and a New President

It's now just about 24 hours since the media officially announced that Barack Obama will be our next President of the United States. History was made last night and many of us are still walking around in awe today with a happy grin on our face and a very optimistic attitude. It also helped that it was November 5th and was sunny and hit 70 degrees in Western New York as well as a good portion of this country!

So, did you get your free Starbuck's yesterday? I didn't get a chance but my daughter Kelsey said she did. She was disappointed however that they ran out of "I voted" stickers because it was her first time voting. See the Starbuck's ad in my previous post.

Participating Krispy Kreme donut shops also had a free promotional offer and were giving customers a free star-shaped donut with red, white and blue sprinkles to those that showed their "I Voted" sticker (sorry Kelsey no donuts for you). Online they changed their traditional Krispy Kreme "hot light" sign signaling a new batch of donuts in stores "Hot Now" to instead read "Hot Vote Now".

If you didn't get free coffee or a donut, Ben & Jerry's was also "Celebrating Democracy" by offering a free scoop of ice cream between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. at participating scoop shops. Ben & Jerry's website has a link to a Facebook page that includes a special locator function that lists 24 colleges and universities around the country where company reps where scooping free Election Day ice cream in student unions and on campuses. Facebook profile pages have been created for each on-campus event with RSVP capability.

"We want to thank you for voting by giving you a free scoop of ice cream," reads the Ben & Jerry's college site Facebook copy. "If you did not vote, we'll give you a scoop anyway, but no complaining about the results"¦or the size of your scoop."

Besides theses promotions, online sites, especially social media, where all buzzing last night. I was tuned into Twitter's Election Day page that had so many tweets coming through it was hard to keep up with them. It was amazing to read the tweets that announced when a network proclaimed a state's winner. When Obama won Ohio I read about it on Twitter first before ABC news proclaimed it.

CNN.com reported today that they brought in 27 million unique visitors to their site on election day, a record. Comscore says they averaged just 5 million unique daily visitors in September, so this is more than 5x normal traffic. The site also generated an record 276 million page views.

So I don't think anything could top a day that gave us free coffee, red, white and blue sprinkled donuts, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, great warm weather, record-breaking online visitors and the democratic election of America's first black president!! Let's keep the momentum going!

Donna's New Marketing Role

Well it's now probably been the longest lapse I've had in writing on my blog since I started Donna's Promo Talk some 20 months ago. I feel like I'm missing a part of me and I apologize to my loyal readers. But honestly I've just been very busy. There's many excuses I can give you, but the main reason is something that I think I should now finally come clean with. When I actually stopped to think about it I realized that I haven't written about this yet , so this post is my coming out of the closet so to speak.

Over the summer I started working for another company. I have been running my own company, DDC Marketing Group, which has specialized in online promotions for over three years now. 2007 was a pretty good year, however, as the year ended and 2008 began I started to see a slow-down in business. The calm before the storm I guess now that I look back. Business with existing clients was still going fairly strong, but new business was not materializing. So, I started to consider some options. 

When an opportunity came up for me to work with this privately-owned company, Butler/Till Media Services I jumped at it. The company is owned and managed by two great women (Sue Butler and Tracy Till) who I worked with during my early years in this business some 20 years plus ago. They've been growing and have consistently made the Rochester Top 100 Companies list for the past few years. The company's services are specifically focused on media placement...the planning, buying and execution of where you see, hear, read the message, not what the message is. Which is a little different for me to get used to again, but my roots do go back to the media side of the business.

I'm part of the online team at Butler/Till as their Emerging Online Media Supervisor. My responsibilities include managing the search marketing initiatives for our clients which has been the first priority and one which I'm still getting up to speed on. Second is to introduce new media strategies to our clients such as mobile marketing, social media, blog marketing and promotions.

I had to first get fully comfortable with utilizing Google's AdWords tool for multiple clients as well as get my head around paid search strategies and executions. I have spent much time these past couple of months reviewing our existing client campaigns as well as Google's Learning Center. I recently took the Google test and passed which now makes me a Google Adwords Qualified Professional.

I am committed to continuing my blogging both here, being a guest blogger at Lipsticking.com and a reader and commenter on many other blogs. I still strongly believe that the best way to be knowledgeable in this area is to actually partake in it. The same I learned goes for paid search marketing. While I could learn some by taking practice quizzes, and reading articles, the best way is to actually build a campaign from scratch and then manage and optimize it.

We just launched a small local online media program that is the first for me at the agency to call my "own client". It's to help promote a new exhibit that the George Eastman House right here in Rochester is hosting which just started this past weekend. The exhibit is called TRAINS! and it is comprised of three different exhibits that all celebrate trains through photographs, video, films and lectures.

We have placed banner ads on various local websites throughout New York State and into Canada which include utilizing Google's Content Network. It also includes a paid search program on Google for those actively searching for this information. The campaign just started on Oct. 1st and so far is doing very well and on it's way to reaching it's goal which is to drive traffic to this microsite that we also developed.

So, it's now exciting for me to be part of a larger team again and see our efforts start to pay off for clients. At first it was a big change going back into an office everyday and I'm still learning many processes and who to go to for what. But I'm also learning many new, interesting things as well as teaching others a few things about what I know. So that's what keeps us all young. Right?

As far as DDC Marketing there are projects and programs that I have committed to and I am continuing to follow through on all of these. I still plan to offer my promotional marketing services under the DDC Marketing name and will incorporate them into Butler Till when and if appropriate.

Right now I'm very proud to be part of a company that was just named one of the 50 Fastest-Growing Women-Owned/Led Businesses in North America by the Women Presidents’ Organization (WPO) and Entrepreneur Magazine.

So, I plan to share with you here more of what we're doing for some of our clients and pass on part of what I'm learning. I hope you'll stick with me as I adjust to my new roles and learn how to keep the balancing act going. Thanks for listening.

Holiday '08 Marketing Outlook

Please hop on over to Lipsticking.com today to read my most recent post, Holiday '08 Marketing Outlook. I've included some interesting stats from BIG Research which gives us an advanced peak at consumer insights relating to this year's holiday gifting season. As we all probably are aware by now, it's not going to be a good one for us marketers, especially anyone in the apparel industry.

My previous post that I wrote on Lipsticking two weeks ago, Politics, Sexism, and Marketing to Millennial Women, received quite a few comments. Whether or not you read the post back then or not, you should take another look just to read some of the different opinions that it generated. It shows how really concerned most of us are today regarding the future of our country and economy.

I'm planning to cover many of the promotional and online campaigns that are focused on the holiday selling season over the next few months, so please stay tuned. If you're working on one that you'd like me to cover, please send me the information. Thanks.

Marketing to the Baby Boomers - 50+

I'm going to make this a quick post. I don't have much time, however I did want to write something here this morning because today's my birthday. And it's not just any birthday. It's the BIG one as the say with the BIG "F" word in it. Yes I'm now officially 50 years old as of 10am EST on this 20th day of September, 2008.

What that means, especially to us in the marketing and advertising industry, is I now have to check the box that puts me in that other demo. The "older adult" demo vs. the "middle-age adult" demo. At least I'm still not in the last box, the 65+ demo. My sister, Frances, had to rub it in and send me this "over the hill" ecard from AOL this morning. When you click on it you get the word "Fifty" of course.

I just wrote a couple of posts about marketing to millennials, those that were breed from us baby boomer parents. So what about us baby boomers?

I was sitting in a presentation the other day given by two fine young women who work for Platform A, the still fairly new conglomerate that is comprised of many smaller companies such as AOL and Advertising.com and who are all owned now by Time-Warner. They were presenting many facts about online usage and the trends we'll see over the next 5-7 years. Bridget joked about one of her first computer memories as a kid which was playing the famous "Oregon Trail". Now I recall playing that with my kids. It brought me back to the fact that when I started in this business there was no such thing as online, let alone a choice of computer games to play.

I was talking to another women that I work with this week, Tracy, and confessed to her that it was my 50th birthday this weekend. She's just a couple of years behind me and we both agreed that in our minds we don't feel 50. We're still the same person we've always been, just a little smarter and wiser from all our experiences. Yes, I need a little more sleep than I used to and I don't bend quite as easy, but I'm still the same person. I have my likes and dislikes, and I'm even more sure of them now then I was in my younger days.

So why market to me differently? Oh I know, there's plenty of research available that tells us marketers why, how and what we should say to the different demographic segments. Now we have this thing called "behavioral targeting" as well. So how are us 50 year-old women supposed to behave? I'm new to this, so I guess I have to learn.

So, Happy Birthday to me (and anniversary). Yes, I got married on my birthday, 22 years ago today on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Today it's a beautiful, sunny Saturday (I think it's the official last day of Summer as well). My hubby's taking me out to play some golf. Maybe I'll get lucky and get a par. We'll see.

Confessions of a Back-To-School Marketing Mom

I'm still trying to recuperate from this past weekend, both physically and emotionally, but thought I should get around to updating my blog tonight nonetheless. This past weekend we dropped my first born daughter off at college for freshman orientation week which started this past Sunday along with many other parents across this country. Not only was it our first college move-in experience, but it also happened to be in New York City at NYU.

We first drove to my sister's house on Saturday who lives about a hour north of the City and who we spent the night with. She happened to invite a few of my old friends over which caused us to be up a little late. Therefore our time getting into the city on Sunday was not as early as we had originally planned. Nothing really new for us though.

When we arrived in NYC I have to say that NYU was pretty well prepared. They had blocked off most of the parking places in front of the dorms and had traffic cops which allowed you to pull right up to unload. However, once uploaded, you had to move your vehicle out ASAP and then check out your options.

Next steps included signing up on a waiting list for a cart to put your stuff in and then waiting on a line that was out the door and down the street for the elevators. Since there was four of us and my daughter's room was only on the fourth floor we decided to skip the elevator line and instead carry her stuff up the stairs ourselves. On my first way up with stuff in tow I passed a mom who was walking up to the 12th floor! She said she had no choice but to do the elevators since they were 12 floors up!  I have to admit that my husband carried the majority of the heavy stuff up to her room which concerned me because it was your typical humid, NYC summer day.  Thank god he quit smoking last year and with the help of some water bottles that we brought with us, we're all still alive today.

Once the stuff was in the room we started unpacking and setting it all up. Now this was our first college move-in experience and even though I thought we were pretty much prepared and thought of everything, there were things we didn't. In old buildings, especially in Manhattan, you don't have many electrical outlets, so we needed more extension cords and power strips. Students today come with too many electronics...laptop computer, printer, TV, fridge, microwave, lamps, etc. One of her suite mates next door even brought a Wii!

The dorm does provide free cable TV hook-up, but it just so happened in our case that the box was on her roommates' side of the room. So we needed a really long TV cable to make it work! No way could we have known this before we came nor the fact that her roommate, who happens to be just from Long Island, would beat us to the move-in.

Thank god for Kmart, which was just a few blocks from the dorm. My husband walked there to get the last minutes things that we needed and then had to go back out a second time. There was also a Radio Shack in the area so they got our business on trip #2.

Now Kmart and Bed Bath and Beyond are the two biggest retailers in the NYU area and they had a shuttle bus set up to take people back and fort on move-in day. Bed Bath and Beyond went another step further and hosted a party at their store that evening for all NYU students which they offered 20% off on their total purchase. The party latest till midnight that night and there were supposedly free snacks and other give-aways. I think this is a brilliant marketing promotion, however, my daughter didn't attend the party. By the time we left her she pretty much had everything she needed. Plus her particular college was hosting a party that night which she did attend. I did however see many families walking around that day with full Bed Bath and Beyond bags.

There is currently a joint online sweepstakes promotion targeted to college bound students called Shop Smart for College Sweepstakes sponsored by Bed Bath & Beyond and Staples. They have a grand prize for students and another grand prize for parents. It's only open till September 2nd, so you need to check it out soon.

We have been somewhat conservative with our spending all summer long as I believe most Americans have. But I have to say that over the past month we contributed quite a bit to the local economy by just getting her ready for college. I'm not sure how most moms do it, but even with the best planning when it comes down to the final days you just start buying so that you have everything you can think of that she needs.

I was quite aware of the huge back-to-school marketing push this year that included many various promotions. We visited and bought from many different retailers, all who were marketing to the college-bound students. They included Wal-Mart, Target, Kmart, Bed Bath & Beyond, Kohl's and Penny's. So, you see what I mean? Did we miss any of the big ones?

We received many direct marketing messages from these retailers, some that included a checklist of "stuff" college kids need. I'm not sure if that was really helpful to us parents or if it just added to the list of "stuff" my daughter felt she really needed.

Next year I have to do this all other again with daughter #2. I think I'll be a little more marketing savvy then (even though I'm in marketing now). Plus daughter #2 is much more easy-going that daughter #1 so it will hopefully be easier. Or will it? We'll see.

Easter Greetings

It's Easter Sunday and I realize that probably not too many people are checking their computer for blog updates today, but I did want to wish everyone a Happy Easter nonetheless.

Did you know that this is the earliest Easter has been in our lifetime (unless you're 95 years old and born before March of 1913). The earliest possible date it could ever occur would be one day earlier - March 22. It's not expected to be this early again till 2160, so none of us won't see that unless some miracle grows our life expectancy. The date is determined by some odd formula that has to do with the full moon and the Jewish Passover. I found a more detailed explanation of this on Wikipedia if you're interested in reading up on it.

Palm Sunday actually occurred before St. Patrick's Day this year and our first day of Spring was just a few days ago. Easter 2008 is not finding the U.S. economy in very good shape. However, according to the National Retail Federation’s 2008 Easter Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, consumers are still expected to spend a total of $14.44 billion on Easter food, apparel, gifts, flowers, decorations and candy. The average consumer will spend $135.03 on the holiday which is almost the same as last year’s expected $135.07. 

Easter is typically seen as the official kick-off to spring, when retailers debut new clothes and consumers are in the mood to buy for warmer weather,” said NRF President and CEO Tracy Mullin. ”Although this is one of the earliest Easter holidays on record, retailers are hoping that this year will be no different."

I have to admit we, as a family, didn't spend much this year. I did buy some candy for my two teenage daughters which I put in a couple of used Easter baskets that I took down from our attic. I sent my parents a potted Easter Lily with some spring flowers since I won't be seeing them this holiday. Plus we spent a little extra on food for our Easter dinner, so I guess we probably did come very close to that $135.03.

My two teenagers did make appearances at the mall this weekend since they had some time off from school. One daughter was already searching for a prom dress but didn't find anything, the other did purchase some new clothes for the warmer weather - it should be here in upstate NY sometime soon!

My sister Eileen sent me this photo on Friday that I thought was just too cute not to share. I have no idea where she found it. So anyhow, here it is and enjoy your Easter Peeps today!

Back from Vacationing in the Sun

Well hello again. Sorry for my absence. I went on a vacation last week with my family and I had all the intentions of writing a few posts in my blog while I was gone, but it just didn't happen. So I apologize for not giving you all a heads up that I would be gone.

We were in the Caribbean island of St. Maarten, which is part of the Netherlands Antilles and is the only Caribbean island that has dual nationality...half the island is Dutch and the other half is French. We have been vacationing on this island since 1991 and hadn't been there in three years, so it was sorta like visiting home again. We own a week at a timeshare resort on the Dutch side called the Royal Islander. It is literally at the beginning of the runway to the Princess Juliana Airport which serves all international guests to St. Maarten/St. Martin as well as some neighboring islands such as St. Barths and Anguilla.

The Royal Islander sits on Maho bay which you can see here. It is a favorite place to watch the planes land and also to see the sun set since it sits on the southwest tip of the island. The largest jet to land is one of the three Air France planes that flies in daily. Here's a shot I got of it. My daughters caught it on video from practically underneath the plane which is pretty cool. Once I get a chance I'll upload it so you can take a look.

So, it was me, my husband Kevin, our two teenage daughters, Kelsey and Alex, and Kelsey's best friend Clair, that made the trip this year. Kelsey turned 18 years old while we were there and bringing Clair along was her present. It hard to believe my daughter's the same little girl that sat on the beach the first time we were there and screamed and cried because she hated the sand! Kelsey will be graduating from high school this year and then off to college, so we figured this was probably the last time we would be able to vacation as a family. So I used up all my US Air frequent flier miles and we went.

The island has been experiencing growing pains and there is quite a bit of new development all over. I do miss the quaint island that we first experienced back in the early 90's, but tourism is their number one economic driver, so progress has been made. The resort does now finally offer Internet access, which I paid extra for, but it didn't work very well. It wasn't wireless and it would work one day, then be off the next. Since we stayed an extra couple of days we had to change rooms and the second room never got the connection to work at all. Kelsey and Clair had some homework they needed to get done and they took over the one laptop we had with us whenever there was any downtime. So, therefore, additional  excuses for not writing in my blog.

What surprised us the most on this trip was that everything was priced in Euros and the dollar is worth less. So, everything was very, very expensive. Food has always been expensive there, but worse now because of the dollar. We would get a break in the past, but not now. Thank our government for that. Most places didn't want to take credit cards either and would take advantage of the exchange rate when paying in dollars. It's not the best time for us Americans to travel outside the country that's for sure.

Coming home we were delayed over two hours in Philadelphia getting into Rochester and we landed after midnight into a snowstorm. I believe the area got about 9 inches. The sun is out this morning and it looks very pretty, but its cold. Oh well, that crystal clear blue water is now a memory fading fast. Only 23 days till Spring arrives.

I promise to get back on track by tomorrow and write about interactive marketing and promotions again. So, please stay tuned. I'm glad we got away, but it's nice to be home again.

New Year's Greetings

In the spirit of the holidays I've been concentrating on getting some rest and relaxation and spending time with family. So I just wanted to take a break from my regular routine to wish you, your families and friends a very Happy New Year. Whether you are planning on partying 'till the wee hours of the morning tonight or just staying home to quietly ring in 2008, I hope you all have a safe and joyful celebration. Whichever way you choose to begin the New Year it is a time to reflect back on what you have achieved during 2007 and look forward to what you'd like to accomplish in the 2008.

So, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the readers who have found Donna's Promo Talk this year and hope you have enjoyed reading about the interactive marketing promotions I have written about. I started this blog at the end of February this past year and I wasn't sure what I was getting in to. Now I'm celebrating the fact that my readership has slowly grown over the year and I thank all of those that have helped me along the way to make this possible. I didn't realize when I became a blogger that I would meet so many great people, both in person and virtually. I guess that's why they call it social media.

It has been a very interesting year as far as the world of advertising and marketing has gone and I'm sure that we'll continue to see many changes in the upcoming year as well. However, I still believe that we should not lose sight of the basic principals of marketing that really haven't changed. The challenge we face now is integrating these basic principals with the new technologies and communication vehicles that are available to us today.

So, I hope you continue to visit me here at Donna's Promo Talk in 2008. I'm not sure exactly how this blog will evolve, but I do have some exciting things in mind, so stay tuned.  Once again, have a safe, happy, successful New Year. I'll see you in 2008!

All the best,

Donna

Another Black Friday Story

Well today's what they call Black Friday and considered the official start to the holiday shopping season with many retailers offering deep discount specials. According to BIGresearch they predict that many retailers may have to extend the sales throughout the season as 33.5% of consumers said they are worse off than a year ago and 50% said there is “too much month at the end of their paycheck”. 

"Consumers’ intention to stick to a budget (37.1%), do more comparative shopping via circulars/newspapers (26.7%) and use more coupons (27.8%) may further impact retailers’ margins. Another recent phenomenon retailers will have to contend with which may impact their bottom lines is the growing popularity of gift card purchases which creates a spending shift beyond the traditional holiday season,” said Gary Drenik, President & CEO of BIGresearch.

My two teenage daughters got to participate in their first crazy "Door Buster/Be the First to Get There" Black Friday specials. Since my older daughter now has her senior driver's license they decided to stay up all night and go hit the stores. They spent a good amount of time Thanksgiving Day going through the sales circulars and cutting out the items they wanted and developing their strategic plan of attack.

My daughter wants a new laptop, and even though I told her I planned on getting her one for her graduation from high school coming up this June, she still was intent on getting this deal from Best Buy that was only advertised on TV. So, we went to BestBuy.com to see if it was for real and they did list the details. It was for a Toshiba Laptop Computer with a Cannon Printer Package for $229, a $650 savings. However, in order to purchase this special you needed a ticket. Tickets would be given out a 3am outside the store and then you could purchase this item between 5am when the store opened and 9am this morning.

So, both my daughters went out about midnight to get in line. Unfortunately it was the coldest night of the year so far with a cold front that came through yesterday bringing down Canadian air with temperatures only in 20's. They ended up No. 104 and 105 in line and Best Buy didn't let them know till sometime almost 5am that they only had 25 tickets to hand out and they were gone! So, no computer. I'm extremely disappointed that BestBuy would let all these people stand in line all night knowing that they had only 25 tickets. You think they would of told them sooner. I'm going to cut up my BestBuy Rewards card and not venture in that store for quite a while.

Well they finally got home a little after 10am this morning. They had gone to the mall and did some clothes shopping instead. They also stopped at Kohl's, which opened at 4am, but didn't buy anything since the register lines were to the back of the store. They also made it to Target to try and get one of the Guitar Hero Game bundles that comes with the game and two gaming guitars. I told them if they could get it Santa would pick up the tab for that one. However, these sold out in 15 minutes after the store opened up at 6am.

So, I haven't decided if I'm going to venture out to any of the stores today. My sister is here from out of town, so we may hit the mall. My daughter already told me they won't be going back out to do any shopping. I'm sure they'll be either in bed or on the couch watching movies the rest of the day. Everyone has their "Black Friday" story to tell and now they'll have theirs. What's yours?

A Timeless Promotion That Thanks our Veterans

In honor of Veteran's Day I thought I'd write about this promotion that I was involved with during my agency days. It didn't have an online component, but was a highly interactive promotion nonetheless that started back in 1999 while I was working with Eastman Kodak and the Wal-Mart photo teams.

Wal-Mart wanted an in-store promotion that would help its customers and store associates express their patriotism and pride around Veterans Day. The Wal-Mart photo department was the perfect place to host this in-store promotion and we were asked to propose some ideas to help reach this objective. The Kodak Picture Kiosk was at the time still a fairly new service and Kodak's objective was to get people to try it as a way to make photo enlargements and reprints. 

So we proposed a Veteran's Day promotion in which invited Wal-Mart customers to bring a photo of their favorite veteran into Wal-Mart and make a complimentary sheet of reprints on the KODAK Picture Kiosk. One 5" x 7" reprint would be displayed on the "Wall Of Honor" to celebrate local veterans and the other 5" x 7" print the customers would keep. To add additional value a special photo holder was created which was used to showcase the photos both in-store and to give to the customer.

The promotion highlighted Veteran’s Day and created a sense of patriotism and pride in Wal-Mart shoppers and associates while reinforcing the local “hometown” culture. It was a huge success and store participation was tremendous. Some stores displayed more than 1,000 photos. One year a store built a scale model of the Washington Monument for their photo display. Wal-Mart´s Director of Photo Center operations praised the promotion as "the most successful Veterans Day event of the past years."

The promotion was recognized as a finalist in the 1999 PRO Awards that first year and then in 2002 it won Best of Show in the Account Specific Category. That was of course a year after 9/11 and we were now at war in Iraq. So the promotion was extended to include not only veterans but also current men and women enlisted in the armed forces. Then in 2004 the theme of the promotion was tied into the yellow ribbon which was used as the picture holder.

I am no longer working with the Kodak and Wal-Mart teams, but I understand that this promotion is still going on in some of the stores this year. It's a promotion that is timeless and perhaps Wal-Mart will consider incorporating an online element into the program sometime in the future. I am very proud to have been involved in this promotion for so many years and today being Veteran's Day I would just like to take the time to remember and thank all our veterans as well as our current service men and women.