The Chrysler brand is launching a national ad campaign today on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars" for its 2008 Chrysler Town & Country minivan. The campaign is aimed at the booming demographic of families with two or more kids for whom only a minivan will do--especially one that provides something like a common-room experience behind the driver and passenger's seats. That living-room aesthetic--via something called "Swivel 'n' Go" seating, which lets the second row seats spin to face the third row around a coffee-table-like addition--is one of a raft of new passenger-centered features in the minivan that is highlighted in the campaign. The others are an industry-first, in-vehicle television service provided via a deal with Sirius and Nickelodeon. The campaign will, in fact, feature Nick's Jimmy Neutron character at events like the Nickelodeon Slime Across America tour that has been in progress since summer and in print ads. There's also a contest in which consumers can upload family photos to a Town & Country Web site for prizes like an all-expenses-paid family trip to the Nickelodeon Family Suites by Holiday Inn in Orlando, Fla., a new kid-friendly hotel and resort. A cross-media ad buy on Nickelodeon properties launches in October. The TV leg of the campaign starting today comprises five 30-second spots on appointment-viewing shows like "Grey's Anatomy," "Men in Trees," "Desperate Housewives," "Ugly Betty" and "60 Minutes." Ads emphasize ergonomic engineering and the strategic focus on the passenger space as a home away from home. Two ads show the minivan being built around a family. In one spot, the Town & Country is built around a family that ends up playing a game on the table as the vehicle is being driven. Another spot shows Jimmy Neutron, a boy genius, dazzled by the vehicle. The campaign also includes two 30-second spots for African-American and Hispanic markets. In addition, print advertising--which focuses on Town & Country's innovation, technology and luxury features--begins appearing in October magazines and includes three two-page spreads and single-page ads. Print ads will appear in Parents, Ladies Home Journal, Vanity Fair, Traveler, Real Simple, In Style, People, Money and Cooking Light. The November issue of Automobile Magazine will feature a Great Vacation Guide custom insert written from the road. There will also be expanded online content featuring a Town & Country walk-around by Jean Jennings, president and editor in chief of the magazine. Interactive media elements for the all-new Chrysler Town & Country include home page takeovers on Yahoo, MSN and AOL, as well as exclusive path and banner ads on AOL, KBB, vehix.com, MSN and Vibrant Media. Other interactive elements include ABC.com featuring four exclusive Town & Country ads during commercial breaks in each of its one-hour programs. Chrysler will also give the Town & Country to influential and active parents for an extended test drive, with the opportunity for them to provide feedback about their real-life experiences with the minivan. Additional online activities include game sponsorships at Pogo.com, as well as custom games--Road Sign Rally and Arcade Journey--that can be found at Chrysler.com/games. Chrysler will also continue its podcast series with hit music and in-depth interviews from top artists at Chrysler.com. The Chrysler brand also created a special edition Monopoly board game featuring Chrysler dealerships and headquarters, as well as fun family travel destinations across the United States. It is designed to fit on the exclusive table between the second and third rows, and is available for purchase at Chrysler.com. David Rooney, director of the Chrysler brand, says the company has to highlight some 35 new features in the campaign, and the focus tends to be on Swivel 'n' Go--at least from an advertising standpoint because it's the most striking, visually. "It's the one most people react to instantly." He says other call-outs are the MyGig Entertainment System, back-up cameras, power third-row seating, and window shades. "The focus is on the inside of the vehicle," he says. "Most vehicles are focused on the driver, but [a minivan] is not built around the driver. It's built around every passenger--and I think that's where you start, and you add features that you might not be able to package with a typical crossover." The minivan market has been at about 1.1 million units per year, and, according to J.D. Power & Associates, has declined slightly due to pressure from the booming crossover market. Rooney says, however, that the minivan market will stay strong. "The number of families with two-plus children that make over $50,000 per year is growing three times faster than the general population," he says. "We're optimistic about the segment; we have run around 35% of the segment [with Town & Country and Dodge Caravan] so we see growth here, and we think there's room for us to grow. We think that need for family transportation that addresses passengers and packages great features and benefits into a vehicle is growing."
For its 60th birthday, Wrangler is celebrating both high--with special editions of chi-chi jeans--and low--auctioning off a farewell lap with a Nascar legend. Owned by VF Corp., Wrangler recently re-signed its partnership with Dale Earnhardt Jr., and is launching an eBay auction for what may well be "the last opportunity to ride with Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the famous Dale Earnhardt Inc. #8 Budweiser Chevrolet." All proceeds from the auction, which wraps up Sept. 30, go to the Victory Junction Gang Camp, a Nascar-themed camp for children with chronic medical conditions or serious illnesses. Dale Jr. will take the winning bidder on a 160-mph ride Oct. 17 at Lowe's Motor Speedway in Charlotte, N.C., before he moves on to the 2008 season with Hendricks Motorsports. The first apparel company with significant Nascar involvement, Wrangler was the primary sponsor of Dale Earnhardt and the legendary blue-and-yellow "Wrangler Jean Machine" back in the 1980s. In addition to Dale Jr., Wrangler continues to use Brett Favre, quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, as a spokesperson. And for consumers whose taste runs a tad more highbrow than Nascar or the NFL, Wrangler says that this week it will announce two limited-edition anniversary jean styles. Sold under the Wrangler47 brand name, a premium line introduced several years ago, the jeans will be sold exclusively at Barneys New York. One model requires that the denim be dipped in an indigo bath six times to achieve the true-blue look the jeans had back in 1947, when they were still known as Blue Bell Coveralls. The second style is fashioned after a classic 1950s Wrangler jean designer Monique Buzy-Pucheu found in a Brooklyn vintage shop. "Approximately six hours of meticulous labor go into each jean to achieve the perfect look. First, it is sprayed with resin, then baked in an oven, hand-sanded for specific wear patterns, stone washed, bleached, dried, hand-dirtied with resin and tint, baked again to cure the color, rinsed, softened, and finally, dried," the company says. Only 600 pairs of each style will be available, retailing from $144 to $176. VF Corp., which recently spun off all its intimate brands to Fruit of the Loom, has been beefing up its denim portfolio. In addition to owning Lee, the company recently acquired Seven for All Mankind, a premium jean marketer.
Companies pushing to get their national brands in front of college students have hooked into mobile coupons through text-messaging on mobile phones. Among those are Ben & Jerry's, Chili's, IHOP, On the Border, Papa John's Pizza, Pizza Hut, Quiznos and Verizon Wireless. The service, now available from Houston-based WHAMtext, allows students to text-message coupon requests to 469426, or shortcode GoWHAM. The business name and college campus code, or zip code, are required in the body of the text message to receive a reply with a discount coupon, complete with tracking number, expiration date, address to nearest participating business, and the amount of a specific item discounted. To cash in, the student shows the coupon on the cell phone screen to the cashier at checkout. Advocates say electronic coupons are ecologically friendly and easier to use than remembering to clip newspaper ads. Unlike print coupons that have fixed pricing and promotions, advertisers can alter the price and special on the coupon at any time by going online to change the discounts and offers, says Jeff Lerner, WHAMtext's vice president/sales and marketing. Four days and two schools into launch, nearly 1,000 coupons have been texted to students. In the next two weeks, students at Oklahoma State University, Kansas State University, the University of Kansas, Texas A&M University, the University of Oklahoma, Louisiana State, and the University of Missouri will have an option to use the service. Papa John's Pizza in Stillwater, Okla. was one of the first businesses to offer the service through WHAMtext. "Quite frankly, I thought it was a stupid idea at first, but I'm trying the service, and it's really cool," explains Tim Leiker, co-owner of Papa John's Pizza in both Stillwater and Eden, Okla. "The service sends a coupon for one of our medium one-topping pizzas for $6.33 right to your phone." And if a student sends a text message asking for a coupon from a company that doesn't subscribe to the service, WHAMtext replies with a discount offer from an advertiser in that same product category. That's Leiker's favorite benefit from the service. In an area where, for example, Subway doesn't advertise, the technology might return a Quiznos or a Schlotzsky's coupon. This way, the participating advertisers have a chance to target someone who is hungry for their type of products in hopes they will try something else. While text message coupons are a no-brainier for today's tech-savvy college students, more importantly, these budding consumers have begun to experiment with brand relationships independent from their parents. Plus, colleges have predictable schedules. They start in autumn. Most follow a football season. "Predictability makes it easy to drive foot traffic with coupon promotions," says John du Pre Gauntt, senior analyst for wireless at eMarketer. "College students are sophisticated enough to introduce financial and travel services, too, and there's a host of companies ready to start a relationship with consumers who want to step out into an adult world." WHAMtext plans to take the text-message coupon service a step further by developing a promotion around sports. Lerner says it's too early to provide concrete details, but the service could promote and market any entertainment event with interactive marketing messages. The service works across all carriers, including AT&T Wireless, T-Mobile, Sprint Nextel or Verizon Wireless.
Dozens of companies are getting on the National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October) bandwagon, creating special pink-themed merchandise and donating a portion of proceeds to breast cancer research. Companies are increasingly using breast cancer cause marketing to reinforce their brand images and differentiate themselves from their competitors. Many marketers have partnered with Susan G. Komen for the Cure, which hosts the Komen Race for the Cure events. Komen's corporate partners include those who are on the Komen Million Dollar Council. In addition to a financial contribution of at least $1 million, each commits to spreading educational messages. The companies include American Airlines, BMW of North America, Boston Market, Ford Division, Hallmark Gold Crown Stores, KitchenAid, Lean Cuisine, M&M Brand Chocolate Candies, Pier 1 Imports and Yoplait USA. M&M Mars has created a special pink blend pack of M&M'S Chocolate Candies that will be available through November. The company will donate $550,000 to Komen, and will invest $395,000 in the M&M's Brand/Komen Nascar race. My M&M's will donate 10% of "Promise Blend" sales to Komen and the company's M&M'S World will donate 10% of Pink Ribbon merchandise sold in stores in 2007 to Komen. Lean Cuisine is in its seventh year of the "Do Something Good for the Cure" promotion, which runs through the end of the year. It includes specially marked packages of its frozen entrees highlighting its partnership with Komen. In addition, the company is selling lunch bags for $9.95, of which $5 will be donated to Komen. Navigating the expanding sea of pink ribbon promotions requires consumers to ask a few critical questions, according to Breast Cancer Action (BCA), a grassroots education and advocacy organization of breast cancer survivors and their supporters. The San Francisco-based group will launch its "Think Before You Pink" campaign (thinkbeforeyoupink.org) on Oct. 1. This will be the sixth year that BCA has conducted the campaign. The group suggests that consumers question the amount of money being donated to breast cancer compared to the amount being spent on marketing, the types of programs the money supports, and what a company is doing to ensure its products are not contributing to the breast cancer epidemic, says BCA spokesperson Katrina Kahl. BCA is focusing its efforts this year on what it calls "pinkwashers"--companies that promote a pink-ribbon campaign but manufacture a product that may be contributing to the disease, she says. Other breast cancer-related promotions include:
Honda today is breaking its first corporate ad campaign in years that includes television. The new campaign includes print and television ads and Internet elements, and touts Honda as the avant-garde of environmental engineering and technical wizardry. The approach is aggressive for a corporate campaign. Corporate-positioning campaigns tend to focus on high-minded print ads in upper-echelon magazines and newspapers, and Honda is no exception. The new campaign continues its corporate "Power of dreams" mantra with TV that features its Asimo robot and home-video style shots of Honda products, experiments and competitive race cars. Honda's recent corporate ads have promoted the automaker, whose U.S. office is in Torrance, Calif., as green. But the company has also had ads featuring Asimo--a diminutive white-paneled android who, in the new TV ad, appears to have shot the home videos himself--a feat that he, or it, is probably capable of. The giveaway is at the end of the ad, where we see a reflection in the window of a Honda sedan, of Asimo shooting a video of him/her/itself. In the spot--for which the musical score is The Who's "I Can See for Miles"--we get a glimpse of the new Honda Jet, the company's entry into the world of corporate aviation, Honda's solar-powered racer and a Honda production car going through its paces. We also see engineers in Honda's futuristic test facility running impact studies on airbags. Another spot begins in November, and will highlight Honda's environmental technology. Ads targeting 25- to-49*-year-olds launch on network TV during season premieres of shows like "Brothers & Sisters," "Dancing With the Stars," "Cane" and "Chuck." Spots will also run on Major League Baseball playoffs, the World Series, nearly 30 cable networks and National Public Radio. Honda will also air the work during special features on cable, such as National Geographic channel's "Preserve Our Planet." Print ads using the "See What We See" theme start next month. Honda is also running the campaign on print and Internet properties under ESPN, O (Oprah's Magazine), Rolling Stone and Wired. One of the print ads shows a hand holding a postcard of a blue, cloud-studded sky against a backdrop of a smoggy downtown L.A. The campaign includes a Web site, dreams.honda.com, where visitors can learn about Honda's solar panel business, marine engines, and various concepts. Honda is also doing roadblocks on AOL, CBS, CNET, Forbes, Time and YouTube. The effort includes rich-media ads that show the TV spots on 17 news, community, environment, technology and sports Web sites. "When we began strategic research, getting started in the concept and process, we did extensive interviews with lots of employees and associates in Honda," says Todd Carey, vice president/associate creative director at RPA. "We talked to engineers and people who worked on different projects--people who helped develop the jet, for instance. And with every interview, we found that no matter whom we talked to, people had a strong vision of what Honda is about. The 'See what we see' line came from talking to an engineer, and he was talking about Honda in terms of a shared vision." Carey says the style of the ads is intended to suggest a family video. The content is meant to encompass what he calls "The three spirits of Honda: "the competitive spirit, Maverick spirit, "The push to be different, to do things that have never been done," he says. And the artisan spirit." Barbara Ponce, who oversees corporate and diversity advertising at American Honda, says the effort is deliberately intended to seem informal. "It's by design, because we want our products to speak for themselves; it's meant to be seen as Honda's home movie shot by a family member. "The campaign is for bringing to life our company in a natural, organic way, underscoring what Honda stands for; we have loyal customers, and it's really to reinforce our relationship with them. It's about what we stand for." She says that while the effort isn't specifically aimed at young consumers, it's meant to appeal to a "youthful mindset." Wes Brown, automotive market consultant at Los Angeles-based Iceology, says Honda needs to differentiate itself as a corporate brand from Toyota and others. "If you look back, from an image standpoint, the brand connected the most strongly with consumers in the '80s, when they were viewed as being very innovative and completely unique among Japanese brands," he says. "But they have struggled since the mid-Nineties to separate themselves from Toyota to the average consumer. While most realize both brands build very good cars, Toyota has more dealers, more vehicles on the road, more selection of vehicles, and more marketing, even at the corporate level. They have to separate themselves from Toyota and even from Koreans and others in a crowded market." Tom Libby, who heads up automotive research at J.D. Power & Associates' Power Information Network, says, by contrast, that the effort is consistent with what they have been doing. "You can't stand still; you can't not advertise. They have to communicate with the consumer." But Libby also argues that Honda stands in good stead with American consumers and has not lost its halo. "Americans see Honda as environmentally friendly, technologically leading and [as] a maker of products of high quality and durability." He also says that the company, by keeping tight control of production, has kept the shine on its nameplate by avoiding the need to incentivize heavily, and sell to daily fleets. "So Honda's retained value is strong." According to the consultancy, Toyota and Honda brands are in the top five in terms of residual value. '"But while I think Toyota is perceived as being a leader in hybrids and a strong company, I don't know if they are perceived as being a leader in technology," says Libby. "Toyota has moved in the direction of focusing on volume and is now willing to have rebates and to promote rebates, while Honda has stayed with what they are doing. So I don't think they have lost; their market share continues to go up." * Editor's Note: This story was amended after publication.
Estee Lauder has launched a web site and national sweepstakes for its Mustang Fragrances, the new men's brand from Aramis and Designer Fragrances. A two-week-long national radio campaign announcing the sweepstakes is running on top 40 contemporary, news and sports stations and will be tagged with a local retailer in each market. The 30-second Mustang spots will air in all 50 states covering all 210 DMAs in the country. Consumers are invited to go to mustangformen.com for a chance to win a VIP weekend during the Ford 400 Championship. The grand prize winner, along with three guests, will be flown to Miami to attend the weekend races at the Miami Speedway from Nov. 15-18, leading up to Sunday's Ford 400 Championships. In addition to first-class accommodations and $2,000 spending money, they will receive a Mario Andretti Driving Experience. The sweepstakes ends Sept. 30. Additional highlights of the web site include the "Adventures from the Backseat" section, the Mustang Fragrances pony girl, Heidi Bailey and a store locator. Filmed during a California Mustang car show, Bailey brings stories from Mustang fans. These stories include "Star-Crossed Boss Love," starring Atila and Michelle, who fell in love while re-building a Mustang, and "Man's Best Friend," featuring Tom and Mark, which chronicles their friendship brought together by their Mustang cars and why everyone wants to ride in Tom's pony after a car show. There are 24 stories, and, beginning in October, visitors will be able to cast their vote for the best one. The winners of the best "Adventures from the Backseat" contest will win a 2008 Ford Mustang, and voters will have the chance to win prize packages as well. The web site was created by Estee Lauder Online in conjunction with The Concept Farm Agency and also features screen savers and wallpaper downloads. The sweepstakes was developed and executed by Area Marketing Associates.