• by John Gaffney , May 19, 2003

Sometimes you need to use cupcakes. That's part of the tactical approach Polaroid used as its wraps a launch campaign for its Polaroid One instant camera. The campaign combined print, TV, Internet and PR events into a new push at the company's target audience.

That target audience has not been defined by a demographic segment. Polaroid marketing spokesperson Kim Reingold said research showed that a person called a "social snapper" was the right person to go after. He or she is a person who is "overscheduled but still takes a lot of time to take pictures," especially of young kids. So in addition to the substantial print and TV run of new ads, Polaroid brought some very young kids together in six cities to spread the word among consumers that a new camera was on the market.

At the New York City event, held at The Children's Museum, 100 children between the ages of 12 -23 months were invited to enter a sweepstakes for the cutest picture. A seven-foot high Polaroid logo was built inside museum, and within the logo were spots for hundreds of cupcakes. Many were consumed with cute messy faces resulting for moms who were given new Polaroid One cameras.

"This is our product launch for the year," Reingold said. "It communicates to our consumer as well as our B-to-B audience and we knew it was going to be very important to integrate all the communications together. It seems like when you have a concentrated ad campaign you can reach out and touch people. But with an integrated campaign you can reach out and touch them a number of times."

A good part of Polaroid's effort has been centered online. "We've really upped the ante with our online advertising," Reingold said. "We know that a lot of people and a lot of our target audience is online and they're really into the entertainment and new sites we've advertised on."

The One ads will run through mid-June. A new ad campaign for the product will kick in for the holiday selling season. In the meantime, Reingold says Polaroid has inked a deal to put on more PR events with Colgate. Together with the Simply White Night brand, the two companies will sponsor National Smile Week during the second week of August.