Donna's Promo Talk

Sharp Teams up with MLB with their Lights Out Challenge Sweepstakes

It's October, and besides the upcoming presidential election and the doom and gloom about Wall Street and our ecomony, let's not forget that it's the most exciting month of the year for sports. I finally got around last week to writing this post about my favorite sport, NFL Football, and the excitement us Buffalo Bills fans have been feeling. We were certainly brought back to a hard reality this past Sunday when our starting quarterback went down on the second play of the game and we lost BIG! But hey, we got a bye coming up this week and we're still 4-1. Much better than we're we've been in over 10 years!

So now I have to talk about those boys of October. Yes, this year's Major League Baseball season is coming to a close. Neither New York teams made it to the playoffs this year and the playoffs have already showed us that 2008 isn't quite the year for those Chicago Cubs either. However, my team, the Boston Red Sox are in there. I'm watching them during Game 4 against the LA Angels right now on TBS as I write this.  So if I get distracted at some point, please give me a break.

Now I'm hoping that the Red Sox will be playing the Tampa Bay Rays next week on October 14th during the fourth game of the American League Championship Series. That's when Sharp Electronics will be teaming up with TBS on a really innovative promotion that will give fans a chance to win a Sharp big-screen TV.

Sharp is promoting its “Lights Out Challenge” with a series of 45-second TV spots that debuted during last week's initial round of Major League Baseball playoff action on TBS. These spots not only highlight the promotion but also the the brand's energy-saving TVs.

The spots direct fans to this TBS micro-site, where they can enter the Sharp Lights Out Challenge Sweepstakes for a chance to win a 46-inch or 42-inch Sharp Aquos TV. They can also register to participate in the partial blackout by indicating how many lights they intend to turn off and logging in their zip code.

“The end goal is to increase awareness and ultimately increase sales,” said Sharp spokesman Chris Loncto. “It really fits perfectly for us.”

Sharp Aquos is MLB’s official HDTV. This interactive promotion is a unique way to integrate traditional TV media with an online promotion. TV viewers during the fourth game of the ALCS  are typically a pretty sizable audience  giving that the series is the best of seven games. This should give Sharp an effective platform to push its LCD TV products in prime time while still at the beginning of the NFL season, at the start the NHL season and just in time for the important 4th quarter holiday shopping season.

Loncto noted that the company also is intent to present its energy-saving perspective: “One of the core philosophies of Sharp is to present products that are energy-saving and energy-creating,” he said.

The micro-site will feature a U.S. Map that will track the states that have turned out the most lights. Announcers on TBS will report on how much energy was saved and which states saved the most during the post-game show.

So whether the Boston Red Sox make it our not, I'll still be tuning in and shutting off some lights. This should be interesting. BTW - there still is no score in the top of the 5th inning, but the Angels are pushing with two men on base. Gotta go now!

NBC Promotes Sunday Night Is Football Night

It's already Week 4 of the new NFL football season and I can't believe I haven't written about football once since it started. Last year I had this post written on opening day. We all start out with great hopes for our team and by now we're either still very optimistic or we're realizing that we're in for a very long season.

Well the Buffalo Bills are now 4-0! They haven't been in this spot in 16 years, since 1992 when they were the Super Bowl team that consisted of Jim Kelly, Thurman Thomas and Bruce Smith! We Bills fans are very, very ecstatic. However, we do realize that since they haven't made the playoffs in the past decade that they've been given a pretty easy schedule this year. Plus, their conference rivals, The New England Patriots have lost their star quarterback, Tom Brady, so that has helped their season outlook quite a bit as well.

NBC Sports is back, entering its third season, with their Sunday Night Football season this year and their main objective is still focused on making "Sunday Night Football Night". They started off the season this year with a September promotion in 7-Eleven stores aimed at targeting its core audience, 18-to- 34-year-old males who NBC sees as the hardcore fans for these Sunday night games.

The Big Match-Up Promotion features branded Big Gulp cups with full Sunday Night Football schedules and branded hot dog containers for that Super Big Bite at 7-Eleven. Banners bearing NBC Sports’ signature tagline, “Sunday night is football night,” are displayed in the windows of the 6,000 7-Eleven stores around the country. Theses banners are co-branded with Pepsi who is a sponsor of NBC’s Sunday night football franchise.

“We wanted to be the first sports franchise to be in 7-Eleven because it’s the best way to reach that hard-to-reach male demographic,” said Mike McCarley, vice president of marketing, promotions and communications for NBC Universal Sports & Olympics. “It’s a great destination to reach those young men who are the avid core football fans.”

7-Eleven found that Sunday Night Football tested off its focus research charts in appeal among those young males, compared to movies it’s promoted to that same demographic crowd, according to McCarley.

7-Eleven came up with the Big Match-Up concept to tie to its Big Gulp and Super Big Bite. Fans had the chance to enter all month in a sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip to a live taping at Football Night in America at NBC Studios in NYC. FreshWorks, who I previously wrote about here when they won this year's top  Reggie Award for another 7-Eleven promotion, are executing the campaign.

NBC Sports has also created the Sunday Night Cookbook which is being marketed through Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble outlets. The cookbook is part of a partnership with Time Warner Home Entertainment and features recipes from top chefs and players representing each NFL team, along with NBC’s announcing crew and singer Faith Hill. Sales proceeds are going to Taste of the NFL, which supports food banks around the country, and the book is expected to be a big holiday season hit.

Well this Sunday Night Football game just ended and the Chicago Bears beat the Philadelphia Eagles 24-2O. It was a great football game. The Bears!

Now we still have 13 more weeks left in this NFL season. Can the Bills hang in there for the long haul? I don't know, but it's gonna be fun watching them. At least we have a prayer. This is such as great game.

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?

Web 2.0 and the Beijing Olympic Games

Today's Wednesday and that means I'm again a guest blogger over at Lipsticking.com.  So, please follow this link and read my latest post that talks about how some Web 2.0 strategies are being integrated with a couple of Olympic marketing efforts.

With only ten days left till the Opening Ceremonies, the excitement is really starting to build. But could NBC be doing more to attract an online audience and will you will following the games online or on TV?

I'm hoping to get some discussion going on over at Lipsticking. So I invite you follow me and discussion over there.

NBC Universal Cross-Promotes Olympic Games and The Mummy

Here's a marketing first: a campaign that promotes the upcoming 2008 Beijing Olympic Games as well as the next sequel in a major summer theatrical movie release. 

NBC, "America's Olympic Network," owns the exclusive U.S. media rights to the Olympic Games through 2012. Universal Pictures, a division of Universal Studios and part of NBC Universal, is behind The Mummy series and this year's release of the next sequel: "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor". NBC Universal is promoting these two huge upcoming August events with what it calls it's "most comprehensive synergistic effort ever".

NBC first launched this combo campaign back on July 1st with a very unique and innovative co-branded TV spot in which they utilized top assets from both their TV and movie studio side. The piece features settings and characters from "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" along with Olympic athletes that are seamlessly blended in sequences in which the action from the film transforms into Olympic events. The connection is that most of the action in The Mummy takes place in China and the Beijing Olympic Games are also in China.

The TV spots will continue through the end of August. “The Mummy” hits theaters on Aug. 1, followed by the Beijing Summer Olympics opening on Aug. 8th. On July 18th an extended 2:30-minute version also started running in NCM theaters nationwide. It also is being featured on in-park screens and Astrovisions at both Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Studios, on screens in 235 college campuses, at the NBC Experience Store at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, on NBC Wireless Networks' NBCNews2Go, NBC.com, NBCOlympics.com and other NBC websites, in over 4,700 New York taxis on the NY10 Taxi Entertainment Network.  Additionally it's being distributed on multiple cable systems nationwide.

Watch the extended piece here:

It's a pretty cool film and one that has been getting rave reviews so far from those who have viewed it. Brendan Fraser, star of "The Mummy," made an appearance at Universal Studios in Orlando, FL, to present a first sneak preview of it as well as mingled with some fans. Not only is this the first time the Olympics Games have been cross-promoted with a major motion film release, but also this year NBC will carry an unprecedented 2,200 hours of coverage streamed live online at NBCOlympics.com.

You can read more about the marketing campaigns surrounding this year's Summer Olympic Games in my previous posts here, here and here.

Guitar Hero and McDonald's Win with American Idol

Well I'm sorry, but I just have to write about American Idol today, which is the buzz of the morning so far all over the Internet. I have really been into the show this year and I have to say that I agree with the judges that they've had some of the best talent make it to the finals this year than they've ever had. And yes, I'm am sooooo glad and sooooo surprised that David Cook won. I pretty much wrote it off that the young girls where going to text in their votes like crazy for the young cutie, David Archeleta. But the surprise was that it wasn't even close....DC won by over 12 million votes with American Idol breaking their record with a total of 90 million.

I was one of those people that recorded it on my DVR last night because I wanted to watch the whole show from the beginning, but wasn't able to sit down at the 8pm start time. So, yes my DVR stopped recording after two hours just when Ryan Seacrest said, "and the winner, by 12 million votes, of American Idol 2008 is..." It brought me right to my computer where I had to search to find out who won which took a few minutes before Yahoo had it up on their home page. I had to wait till this morning to see the video highlights which included the end announcement! This reminded me of the Soprano's surprising ending earlier this season when they went to a black screen and sent us online to find out if our televisions had screwed up and what we may had missed. In that case, nothing!

So, while the show this season has come down in its ratings from last year, it still has beat out anything else on TV, which just goes to show us that television's overall share is down, and that's where it will most likely stay.

I really enjoyed the finale show even though there were some "chezzy" moments. Look at all the talent they had...Seal singing with Syesha who made a great duo. He's got an amazing voice and she was able to hold her own while also looking as stunning as usual. Graham Nash performing Teach Your Children with Brooke White just made me smile. Donna Summers did look her age on the stage with all the beautiful, young female finalists, but she still has one hell of a voice. And the most fun I've seen on TV in quite a while was David Cook performing "Sharp Dressed Man" with ZZ Top...they were great!

Guitar Hero got in on the entertainment marketing bandwagon and was also a big winner last night. They ran two commercials, one of each of the Davids, performing the famous Tom Cruise scene from Risky Business. You know, where he slides across the hardwood floor in his socks and underwear, jumps on the couch and lip-syncs to "Ole' Time Rock and Roll". In this version however, they weren't playing air guitar, but of course the Guitar Hero player. Here's David Cook's Version:

Micheal Myers who was there to promote is new, upcoming film, The Love Guru, also made us laugh with a "Sitar Hero" stint. It was all fun, fun all around. And then experiencing David's Cook's final performance at the very end of the show just proved that America got it right this year.

So as an excuse to write about the American Idol Season 7 finale, I also thought I'd mention an interactive promotion that McDonald's did as a major partner with this them year. McDonald's invited America to pick an "American Idol" from one of eight musical Happy Meal toys that they created to name a Happy Meal superstar. Each toy plays a tune within the genre of the music their character represents: groove to disco songs with Disco Dave, line dance with Country Clay, rock out with Rockin' Riley (shown here), vibe to the beat with Lil' Hip Hop, make a melody with Hippie Harmony, sing along with New Wave Nigel, jam with Soulful Selma or kick it with Punky Pete! McDonald's customers went online to happymeal.com to vote for their favorite. 

McDonald's also offered a chance for a couple of lucky customers to experience American Idol with the "You're Going to Hollywood" Sweepstakes. Consumers were invited online to happymeal.com to enter for a chance to win one of two prizes. Joseph Kershenbaum, of Lowell, Mass., and Cheryl Russell, of Riverside, Calif., each traveled to Los Angeles for a three-day/two-night trip. Kershenbaum attended the May 20 show, while Russell attended last night's finale.  “McDonald's congratulates our winners on this exciting opportunity to enjoy America's hit television show in person,” said Rebecca Anderson, Marketing Manager, McDonald’s USA.

I'll now have to wait a while to see David Cook perform again and also for American Idol Season 8 to begin. I guess it's probably because I have a teenage daughter who's a singer and an actress that I really get emotional about this show. I'm just so proud of my daughter who's been accepted into NYU's prestigious Tisch School of performing arts for the Fall semester. Maybe, just maybe she'll want to tryout this summer for Season 8. That would screw up her college plans if she got in, but you never know. Stay tuned!

Congratulations to David Cook and David Archeleta.

64% of Super Bowl Ads Promoted their Website

What a football game! While it was not a high scoring game, Super Bowl XLLI was close throughout all four quarters and turned out a truly unbelievable ending. Sorry Patriots fans, but the Giants winning the Super Bowl and beating what was the undefeated Patriots is one of the best thing to happen in this country in awhile. It may just come right behind 2008 being the year we're finally going to elect a new President.

Anyhow, my initial opinion and from what comments I've read so far today, the NFL did a much better job than the advertisers. Yes there were a few good ads but also some pretty lame ones. There will be many different personal opinions regarding who liked what, and there should be since we're talking about an audience of over 90 million people. But all in all not many that will be remembered by next year's Super Bowl.

In my last post I wrote about the Super Bowl ads and how well they were integrating offline with online promotions. I drew from MediaPost's Joshua Stylman who pointed out that nearly one in five ads in last year's Super Bowl failed to include a URL and 90% of them lacked any call-to-action! So, my prediction for this year was that we'd see URL's in close to 90%, if not all of them and that half would have some type of call to action.

So I reviewed all the ads this morning which I watched from Advertising Age's site. Here's what I came up with...of the 50 national TV spots that ran during the actual game time, 32 included URL's at the end. That's only 64%, not the 90% that I guessed we'd have, but it's sure much more than last year. Surprisingly the big brands were the ones that didn't include their URL addresses. Could that be that they're big enough that they don't need to or care to? Or do they still just don't get it?

Anheuser-Busch was the largest advertiser with seven different spots, all but one for Bud Light. Now with seven spots you'd at least have to end up with one or two on the top favorite lists today. I've read some reviews that really liked the Fire ad. That one was pretty clever and one of my favs. Others, mostly Will Ferrell fans, loved his spot and I'm sure we'll hear the "suck one" phrase being repeated for awhile. But why didn't A-B at least end their spots with www.budbowl.com? Visitors could go to the website during the game and vote on which of A-B's Super Bowl ads they liked the most. Today the site shows the voter's choice being the Clydesdale Team ad. It was the only one of theirs that pulled on the heartstrings.

Coca-Cola was the other major advertiser that didn't include any URL's. They had three TV spots, two for Coke and one for Vitamin Water. The Coke spot with the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons fighting over the Coke bottle balloon was clever and emotionally sweet, but it didn't make me want a Coke. I think they could have done a lot more with that storyline and extended it online. If you visit the Vitamin Water website you are invited to "Horse around with Shaq" where you are redirected to a MySpace Interactive Promotions page where you can watch the ad again, play the interactive game "Race in the Shaq Derby", download a widget, upload your photo and become a jockey in "Put on your Racing Face". They've got lots of fun, interactive stuff here that they should have promoted more. 

Pepsi-Cola was the second largest advertiser with a total of four TV spots. They are split with two spots having a URL address and two not. The Pepsi Stuff promotion I've already written about in an earlier post which used the Justin Timberlake ad to drive people to the PepsiStuff website. The spot they ran for SoBe Life Water ended with www.Thrillicious.com where you can engage more with the So Be Lizards.

Pepsi didn't include a URL address for the Diet Pepsi Max which I was surprised by. The other was the "Bob's House" ad which will probably be the most memorable ad since it was the first time a brand recognized the deaf community in a national TV spot, much less on the Super Bowl. There was no sound during the 60-second ad just sign language which was captioned. I live in Rochester, NY which is home to RIT's National Technical Institute for the Deaf, so we have a pretty huge deaf community here. The spot includes Darren Therriault, an NTID graduate and Wayne Betts Jr., another alumni who was a production assistant. To see the commercial and a “making of” the video, visit www.pepsi.com/bobshouse , but they didn't bother to include this info at the end of the spot. Too bad.

The other non-URL ads were P&G's Tide Stain, Gatorade's Jeter, GM's Why Push?, McDonald's Ronald McDonald's House, Hershey's Ice Breakers and Victoria's Secret. At least you'd think Victoria's Secret would have sent guys online to shop for the women in their lives or if they don't have one at the moment, to look at the VC Models! Gatorade's site today is congratulating the NY Giants and Eli Manning and offering a limited edition NY Giants Super Bowl XXLII bottle. TIde actually has the My Talking Stain website where you can play Be the Stain Instant Win Game and also a consumer-generated content contest where you can upload your own stain ad.

GoDaddy.com was probably the most successful at integrating the web with their TV spot. Their server must have been prepared for a mad rush to their website to view race-car driver Danica Patrick's "Exposure" ad. Too bad it was for such a sexist ad. I already mentioned the Pepsi Stuff online promotion, as well as Unilever's Sunsilk Life Can't Wait contest. SalesGenie.com had an interesting offer. While I wasn't crazy about their two ads, both offered 100 free sales leads by visiting salesgenie.com/tv. Toshiba also had a offer advertising their HD-DVD  player for $149 and listing the participating retailers.

BTW - The winner of the Dorito's "Crash the Super Bowl" online contest was announced by airing the winning music video created by 22 year old Kina Grannis from Austin, TX singing “Message  From Your Heart. Good luck Kina. She definitely has some talent. 

Reprise Media just released preliminary results that show how well these advertisers integrated search engines and social media into their mix. So, check it out. All in all promotions and the web played a much bigger role with this year's Super Bowl advertising than in the past. However, I'm still surprised that it didn't play an even larger role. Hey, there's always next year - and maybe, just maybe the Buffalo Bills will make it to at least the playoffs! You know they still hold the record for the only team that's made it to the Super Bowl four years in a row! Unfortunately they didn't win the championship in any of them.

One last note - Thank god we didn't see any KFC Hot Wings Chicken Dances.

Cars.Com Launches New Interactive Campaign on Super Bowl XXLII

It’s now the beginning of Super Bowl XLII weekend with kick-off a little more than 48 hours away. With all the media and marketing hype it's kinda hard to remember that there's an actual football game at the center of all this hype.

However, besides the many news stories surrounding the Super Bowl today's breaking news is that Microsoft put in a $44.6 BILLION bid to buy YAHOO! The timing kinda reminds me of Alex Rodriguez and the New York Yankees trying to up stage the Boston Red Sox in the last World Series with back and forth contract negotiations! The nerve of Microsoft announcing this on the eve of what has turned into a national holiday for us Americans!

Anyhow, I've written serveral posts on the many interactive promotions that are tied one way or another to Super Bowl XLII. The most important fact though that I would like to point out is that many marketers this year are now integrating interactive promotions into the mix. Whether they're paying the big $2.7 million for a 30- second spot or not, they've finally realized that offering their consumers some type of incentive through a website is the best way to actually engage them.

This article ran yesterday by MediaPost's Joshua Stylman which lists "Three Simple Steps To Score Online on Game Day". Joshua pointed out that nearly one in five ads in last year's Super Bowl failed to include a URL and 90% of them lacked any call-to-action! It's hard to believe that was just a year ago. I bet we'll see URL's in close to 90%, if not all of the ads this year. Plus, I believe from what I've read that more that half will have some type of call to action driving people online.

I have just one more promotion that I would like to quickly feature before the big game is upon us. It involves a new campaign that Cars.com will be launching with two ads running during the Super Bowl. The objective of their "Car Shopping Confidence" Campaign is to position Cars.com as the way to prepare when shopping for a car. An interactive campaign is scheduled to launch on their website immediately following the game.

"2008 will be a breakout year for the Cars.com brand as we make a significant marketing investment to extend awareness of the site and differentiate Cars.com from other car-shopping destinations," said Mitch Golub, president of Cars.com. "With all-new creative featuring our new brand message, the Super Bowl offers the ultimate media opportunity to introduce our campaign to the more-than 90 million viewers expected to tune in."

Cars.com's two 30-second spots will run during the first and third quarters. Both ads close with the new tagline, Confidence Comes Standard. MediaPost 's Out to Launch featured teaser ads you can watch here and here. The interactive campaign, called Waiting Room, is where consumers can also watch the commercials and as well as engage with characters featured in the ads. These ad characters are no longer needed to assist car shoppers at the dealership because those shoppers have prepared themselves on Cars.com. The characters are seen in a series of entertaining video vignettes as well as in customizable email messages that consumers can send to help them negotiate other situations in their lives. Both the ads and the interactive campaign were created and produced by DDB Chicago.

"We want to educate shoppers that Cars.com has all the information they need to take control of the shopping process," Golub said. "The Super Bowl gives us a platform to get that message out in a big way, but it's just the starting point of a year-long campaign. We plan to surround consumers with our new message on air, in print and online to let them know Cars.com gives them everything they need to confidently buy a new or used car."

Not only has Cars.com integrated its website, but will feature the new creative on Yahoo!, MySpace and YouTube to build on Super Bowl momentum. Cars.com's local affiliate network of 175 leading newspapers and television stations will also back the campaign on their leading websites, many dedicating homepage takeovers scheduled to run following the Super Bowl.

So, I think Cars.com really gets it. Also I'm curious to see if their new interactive campaign turns into the next viral marketing hit or not. You never know. Who would of thought a bunch of crazy elves would engage us as much as they did over the holidays.

I'd like to wish a Happy Super Bowl Sunday to all. Make sure you have enough chips and dip and of course beer on hand. Come back on Monday and we'll discuss how many brands actually did "get it" and those that didn't. Oh and by the way if you're wondering, I'm rooting for the underdogs! Go Giants!

Pepsi to Launch Biggest Promotion Ever During Super Bowl

This past weekend was our first one without football in quite a while. Its always a sad reminder that the season is over...for most of us anyhow. The Patriots and the Giants are the only two teams left with now less than a week away from playing in Super Bowl XLII. The hype for this big game and the marketing associated with it just keeps on rising, so I thought I might as well continue writing about it.

Another PepsiCo brand that will be joining Frito-Lay and its Doritos Brand with advertising time during this year's Super Bowl is Pepsi who is planning to use the event to launch its biggest promotion ever. Justin Timberlake will star in a Pepsi Stuff commercial called “Magnetic Attraction” filled with him performing a number of wild stunts showing how every sip of Pepsi gets you closer to the music and “stuff” you want.

“Justin Timberlake is one of the biggest stars in the world, what better way to launch our biggest promotion ever than with him on the Super Bowl,” said Cie Nicholson, SVP and chief marketing officer, Pepsi-Cola North America.

The Pepsi Stuff interactive promotion is a partnership with Amazon.com where consumers can download DRM-free MP3 music. Four billion specially marked Pepsi packages will allow people to collect points and redeem them for music from Amazon MP3 that can be played on virtually any digital portable device (including iPods), organized in any music management application, or burned to a CD.

“We are excited to team up with Pepsi and reward millions of Pepsi Stuff participants with high-quality DRM-free music downloads from major and independent labels, playable on virtually any device, and an easy downloading experience that doesn't require special software,” said Bill Carr, Amazon.com Vice President for Digital Music and Movies.

Beginning February 1, consumers purchasing Pepsi products can “bank” their points on PepsiStuff.com and redeem them for prizes including the music downloads from Amazon MP3, as well as electronics and apparel. Five points earn consumers one MP3 song download from the libraries of EMI Music, SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT, Warner Music Group and tens of thousands of other music labels.

“Pepsi Stuff gives consumers choices – many choices: from the prizes they select, to the music they want to hear, to the device they want to play it on,” said Cie Nicholson, SVP and chief marketing officer, Pepsi-Cola North America. “We're also broadening the prize pool to include Amazon Unbox TV downloads, electronics, apparel, DVDs and CDs. We're offering up to $1 billion in prizes, making this the largest promotion we've ever done.”

Participants can also enter a daily sweepstakes for the chance to win trips to events like the Super Bowl, the MLB All-Star game and the Daytona 500, as well as for cash and many other big prizes.  Consumers may sign up now to be reminded when the promotion begins at pepsistuff.com.

Last week Pepsi starting promoting the campaign with a 60-foot inflatable robot monster that could be seen on the streets of New York City including at Penn Station and then stopping in Times Square. The “Pepsi Stuff Monster” used street teams that laid down the monster’s “tracks” (large robot footprints) along with giveaways that included CDs, DVDs, hats, shirts, belt buckles and many envelopes containing access codes for the music downloads.

The Pepsi Stuff Monster is now in Glendale AZ, where it is part of the Super Bowl Week entertainment set up around the University of Phoenix Stadium. An animated version will appear in a Pepsi TV spot launching some time after the Super Bowl where it will show up anywhere people are drinking Pepsi to hand out free music and gear.

Zoom Media and Marketing executed the New York City Monster experiential part of the promotion. The advertising campaign, which includes TV, radio and outdoor, was created by BBDO NY and TracyLocke, Pepsi's promotional agency of record, also has been instrumental in the development and ongoing execution of the program. For a campaign this huge the integration into all communications is key to its success and it appears that Pepsi has gotten all it's team players on board to do just that.

Oreo Grabs Manning Brothers for DSRL Interactive Promotional Campaign

Well I first have to share some exciting news with you before I begin today's post. I’ve been accepted as a contributing author with ADOTAS... a publication focused on the online advertising and media industry. It features a daily email newsletter that reaches over 100,000 advertising professionals monthly. I will have a monthly article that will run on the 2nd Tuesday of each month beginning Feb. 12th. My focus will be similar to this blog...current interactive promotions.

In the meantime they invited me to submit an article so I sent them the Doritos Super Bowl post I recently wrote and it ran yesterday as the top feature! Here’s the link. I'd like to welcome Adotas readers to Donna's Promo Talk.

Speaking of the Super Bowl, did anyone see the ad that ran last night featuring both of the Manning brothers? I was wondering how quickly a brand was going to get these two famous quarterbacks to appear in together. I didn't think it would be Oreo though!

Now we have the young Eli Manning premiering in his first ad campaign right before he makes his debut in Super Bowl XLII. Then we have last year's Super Bowl winning quarterback, Payton Manning, who's become a TV celebrity over the past year, competing with his brother to see who licks their Oreo quicker! I'm not sure sure if I like seeing these two tough guys licking cookies! Watch the ad here.

Anyhow, the folks from Kraft have created this Double Stuf Racing League (DSRL) - a fierce competition that involves twisting, licking and dunking your Oreo cookie. Visitors to the DSRL promotional website are invited by the Mannings to join the league and then try and out-lick them through an interactive instant win promotion. 10 grand prize winners will receive a trip to New Orleans this July for a chance to compete against Payton and Eli in a DSRL match. The one that wins the match will receive $10,000!

Well I played the game and I wasn't an instant winner. However, once registered you can come back to the website and play once a day up until 5/21/08. There's also another instant-win game which is giving away 2,000 Official DSLR Training Kits that include a cooler, two milk glasses, a DSLR jersey and a headband. This game is open till 12/01/08. There's lots of other "stuf" to do on this interactive website to help you get good at licking Oreos. You can even create a "Yobble" (you'll have to visit the website to find out what a Yobble is).

This DSRL interactive promotional campaign is the first of its kind for the Oreo brand which was created by Draftfcb New York. Besides the website, the ad campaign features the entire Manning family, with parents Archie and Olivia supporting their sons' decision to become "two sport" athletes. I learned that a series of teaser ads kicked off back in December along with an unbranded teaser website. The Mannings' "second sport", the DSRL, was revealed online Jan. 9 and in TV ads during Peyton's playoff game on Jan. 13.

I think it's a great campaign, however, it's really going to be hard for me now to watch Eli in the SuperBowl without that image of him licking an Oreo coming into my head!