|
|
|
Marketers on the Road Again |
|
|
|
Brand managers rev up old-school mobile marketing tours as the effectiveness of TV commercials comes into question.
Some say alcohol can serve as a truth serum. The Promotions Group West (PGW), an experiential marketing company based in Los Angeles, agrees. That’s why when it ran its “Secrets from the road” mobile tour, it positioned a mobile recording studio right outside of popular nightclubs and hot spots in 10 major markets.
The idea was to get patrons with lips loose from lubricant liquors to spill some saucy little secrets for a podcast available at Apple iTunes. The good-spirited promotion, which ran April-June 2006, was all part of an effort designed to generate awareness for the Game Show Network’s series I’ve Got a Secret.
To lure revelers into the recording studio, staffers handed out plastic “Secret O-Meter” cards. If recipients pressed a thumb onto the heat sensitive-card, they could find out how deep and dark their inner secrets were. If the card remained black it was rated “yawn.” However, if it turned red, it received the “I need a shower” rating.
In addition to being interactive, the card was informative. It said: “Tune into I’ve Got a Secret at 11:30” and “Visit gsn.com/secret to see if your secret was posted on our iTunes podcast.” Ten thousand cards were distributed in each market as well as logoed T-shirts, postcards and branded drink tickets (in conjunction with participating establishments).
“People got a little bit drunk and started talking about things they wouldn’t have talked about,” admits PGW President Russ Jones.
Like what? Well, one woman dated her first cousin for a little while but broke it off because she was nervous her family would find out. A nurse who didn’t know how to read blood pressure admitted to just making up the results. And a man who told his wife he was going to the beach with his friends for vacation instead booked a trip to the Chicago Gay Pride Parade.
Although the promotion ended months ago, more than a million people have subscribed to listen to the podcasts. “The goal of any program is to take what we’re doing in the field and give it life after the tour is over,” says Jones.
Letting people experience a brand on their terms via mobile marketing events and giving them a logoed keepsake to remember it by has become an increasingly more attractive strategy for marketers. Be it The Gap or Motorola or Panasonic, more and more marketers are taking it to the streets to build up buzz for their brands.
Call them road shows, mobile marketing tours, experiential marketing or whatever term you like, the fact of the matter is this form of nontraditional marketing is hot right now – as is the use of integrated logoed merchandise at these events.
Showing up where you know there will be a lot of people and handing out logoed items is as old a marketing trick as tacking up an advertisement on a busy street corner. Yet today, it is getting a longer look than it had in recent history. Why? Because marketing decision-makers have become disenchanted with television commercials.
Mobile marketing “has been around forever,” says Laura Ries, branding expert and coauthor of The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding, “but most companies were in love with the mainstream media and producing sexy 30-second commercials. Over the past few years television spots have proven to be not all that effective. That’s set marketers off in search of new [or rather old] mediums.”
John Palumbo, CEO of the BigHeads Network, LLC, a brand marketing consultancy agrees. “Everyone realizes that the media is saturated with so many messages. People are looking for other ways to get the word out.”
TV ads will not likely be a tool locked away in the marketer’s toolshed forever, because they are helpful in building brand awareness. However, when it comes to better connecting with consumers, Palumbo says other “layers,” like mobile marketing tours and logoed merchandise, can help better drive sales.
Lindsay Lohan Models Promotional Products.
Last summer when “it girl” Lindsay Lohan was photographed for People magazine guest deejaying at a club in New York’s Meatpacking District, what was she spotted wearing? Love beads given away as part of The Gap’s “Rock Color Summer of Love Bus Tour.” The idea behind the tour was to bring an unexpected Gap experience to places where a Gap store wouldn’t normally be found, like the beach or the Meatpackaging District.
The A Squared Group, West Hollywood, CA, reconfigured a school bus to create a little boutique with a Partridge Family vibe. To get consumers interested in stopping in to check out the pop-up store as well as to get them thinking of The Gap, plenty of promotional products were given away. During May and June, 80,000 love beads, 15,000 keychains, 10,000 tattoos, 10,000 rubber band bracelets, 10,000 rope bracelets and 10,000 beach balls were handed out to passersby.
“We wanted to pique their interest, start a conversation or spark a memory by handing them something,” says Amy Cotteleer, president of The A Squared Group.
The fact that Lohan brought the promotion to a whole other level was just a testament to “picking an item that was integrated into the overall experience,” says Cotteleer. It has to be age specific, time specific and place specific. We didn’t just give away Rubik’s Cubes.”
This is a mistake marketers often make, per experts. While T-shirts and pens are often good options, a better option is one that is integral to the event. Take, for example, what Motorola did during the last season of the National Football League. It set up an event stage at one game per week where a broadcaster talked about the game, the brand and gave away a premium item. There were plenty of items to choose from, but the Motorola struck a chord with its inflatable headsets similar to those that coaches wear on the sidelines.
“During a Monday Night Football game, the camera panned across the crowd, and there on national television is everyone wearing these Motorola headsets. That’s game, set, match,” says Steve Jarvis, executive vice president for GMR Marketing, Chicago, who helped create the events where upwards to 10,000 inflatable headsets were distributed.
“The logoed premium has to be endemic to the event. I’m surprised how often you say, ‘Here’s a T-shirt or hat.’ That doesn’t say anything special about why people are excited about the event, festival or activity,” Jarvis says. “Do you want an ‘insert-logo-here’ premium or something people will walk halfway around a stadium to find? Fans were asking people ‘where’d you get that?’ The question is always ‘how do we become part of the event and provide a premium that has a little shelf life versus something you throw away 20 minutes later?’”
Of course inflatable headsets aren’t for everyone, and often a T-shirt or hat is the perfect complement to a mobile marketing program. However, many will agree that if apparel is elected as the item of choice, use good quality items or you’ll end up leaving a bad taste in the recipient’s mouth. “It’s all about the quality. There are horrible, cheap shirts or nice, soft cotton ones that people will want to wear,” says Josh Taekman, president, Buzztone, New York/Los Angeles, who created shirts to support the debut of the Will Smith film The Pursuit of Happyness.
An attractive design is essential as well. Sure a company wants people to see its brand name or logo on the merchandise, however if it ends up in the trash, no one will see it except for maybe the guy working at the dump. On the other hand, trendy and good-quality merchandise might even find its way into the hands of celebrities like Lohan, providing additional branding opportunities. “Even though consumers are in the habit of taking any free product they can get their hands on, if there’s no usage then there’s no additional brand impression or further connection with the consumer,” says Taekman.
If a shirt, hat or backpack is of the highest quality, if a logo is splashed all over it, “nobody would ever want it,” continues Taekman. “Too many companies spend the bulk of their money creating items that are not desired by the end consumer.”
Know Thy Skate Rat and Rapper.
Skateboarders are a pretty rough-and-tumble bunch. They’re not afraid of nearly breaking their necks as they “grind a rail” to impress their friends. And often skaters will video one another to capture their feats and/or tremendously painful wipeouts. That’s why Panasonic created its “Share the Air” program to tie in with the five stops of the Dew Action Sports Tour. While the tour is in-market for three days, the 150,000 fans in attendance can hit the sponsor village between venues. This gives Panasonic, Right Guard, Toyota and others the chance to make an impression on the cynical young adult male audience.
“They can definitely be engaged, but the brands have to prove they have a reason to be there,” says Drew Neisser, CEO of Renegade Marketing Group, New York.
Panasonic recognized that photography and videography is a big part of the sport, so it created a DVD explaining the best ways to shoot action sports footage. It hired top talent to capture some breathtaking stunts, which were displayed on 23 high-definition plasma TVs. A Panasonic touch screen TV offered a game that randomly selected prizes for the kids who stopped by to take it all in. Winners took home everything from logoed wristbands to water bottles to Panasonic devices.
“ Free stuff is important. You’ve got to have it. It’s just a part of the program,” says Neisser. “A water bottle lasts. They bring it home. They show it to their friends. It has a life of its own.”
Of course, every unique audience offers a unique opportunity for marketers to connect with consumers with a unique product. For the yearly Camp Jeep event, where Jeep owners drive to rustic locales for a summer weekend, bobbleheads did the trick. As part of the kids’ arts and crafts classes, they painted a Jeep logo embossed bobblehead.
For the Gap Body Bra Bar, which popped up at malls across the country to introduce women to the chain’s lingerie line, flavored water and fortune cookies were the right ingredients. To illustrate the fact that 85% of women wear the wrong-sized bra, fortune cookies included messages like “your cup runneth over.”
The premiums helped ease a potentially awkward situation, says Cotteleer. “Women were coming into an environment to talk about bras. I mean they’re called unmentionables for a reason …The cookie made them laugh. It was an icebreaker.”
Axe Body Spray, which like Panasonic attacks the difficult young-male demographic, signed a tie-in deal with hip-hop star Ludacris. The problem was how to bring him, the brand and his audience together. Since seemingly every hip-hop star has a towel in his or her back pocket to wipe themselves off with, Axe saw an opportunity. At performances, Ludacris would use a black Axe-logoed hand towel and throw it into the audience. “Axe angels” also handed them out to the audience.
Axe also found a way to bring its TV campaign and its mobile tour together in harmony for its Clix fragrance. In its TV ads, pop star Nick Lachey used a clicker, that a doorman or umpire might use to keep track of every time he was checked out by an attractive female. He is stunned to see the average guy who wears Axe Clix had more clicks. The brand gave away logoed clickers on college campuses in support of the effort.
Indeed, there’s no reason why mobile marketing, logoed merchandise and 30-second TV ads “can’t play nice together,” sums up Palumbo. “TV ads aren’t ineffective. They just need another layer. They provide the layer of awareness where people see the brand and know about. The non-traditional components like mobile marketing show how the brands fit in their lives. It can show them why they need a brand, how to use it and why it fits.”
Reprinted with permission of Successful Promotions, copyright 2007
Browse Brand Awareness and Promotional Marketing Uses.
Return to Promotional Product Articles
Visit our Promotional Product Guides
Visit our Promotional Products Education Center
|
|
|
