After five years of selling itself as a car that can reflect one's individuality, Scion is looking to celebrate its community of individual owners via a new marketing campaign that showcases how owners come together via their customized vehicles. "Five years ago, when we started, we were all about personalization," Dawn Ahmed, corporate manager for Scion, tells Marketing Daily. "One of the things that surprised us was how quickly people took ownership of our brand and the passion they have for it." The cornerstone of the new effort is a 60-second commercial, which began running in movie theaters over the weekend. The commercial shows Scion owners coming together in the Nevada desert. On a stage, an emcee addresses the crowd of owners, pointing out the different models--from xAs, xBs, tCs and xDs--they have brought together. "It is that which makes us different that brings us together," the emcee declares. The spot ends with the Scion logo and its five-year-old tagline, "What moves you." An additional tagline, "United by Individuality," also appears. "It's more of a campaign idea than a second tagline," Ahmed says. "We wanted to showcase the fact that Scion owners want to come together and they do so over customization." Other elements of the campaign will roll out over the next 18 months. The cinema ad will begin airing on broadcast and cable on Aug. 4. Also in early August, the first round of print ads will appear. The first round will involve a gatefold spread, showcasing all of the customized Scions that appeared at the shoot. Billboards featuring individual owners' Scions will run in 22 markets through October. "It's almost like a new brand campaign that presents a community in a much stronger way than it has in the past," says Simon Needham, creative director of ATTIK, the agency that created the campaign. "But obviously, the takeaway we want is the sense of community ... It's a celebration of our owners and an expression for other people that they want to be a part of [that community]." Community-building is an important part of Scion's marketing efforts. In the coming months, the company will unveil an online effort that will further bring the community of Scion owners together, Ahmed says. She and Scion president Jack Hollis make a point of visiting owners groups in various cities around the U.S., she says--providing a way for the company to continue growing its relationship with the owners and owner groups as a way of building its brand and sales, Ahmed says. "Working with a community is one of the most important things a brand can do," she says.
No one can say that Mars Snackfood isn't making the most of M&M's sponsorship of the No. 18 Joe Gibbs Racing team and driver Kyle Busch in the Nascar Sprint Cup Series. Capitalizing on Busch's winning streak this season (seven wins and 10 top-five finishes), Mars Direct Inc. is launching a new blend of personalized "My M&M's" candies featuring Busch. The blend includes yellow, brown, red and white candies (M&M Racing's signature colors) printed with Busch's face, autograph, car number and the message "Go Kyle!" Fans can buy the candies online at mymms.com/racing or by calling a toll-free number. Price: $12.99 per seven-ounce bag, with a minimum of three bags. (Throw in a "classic red candy dispenser," and the price of the three bags jumps to $59.99.) Big Nascar families can economize with the five-pound bulk box, at $140. My M&M's will donate $5,000 (128 standard orders' worth) to the Kyle Busch Foundation, which supports children's homes that provide safe, supportive environments. In May, to tie in with Busch's birthday, Mars "presented" the driver with his own "Inner M" print ad. The Inner M ad series features celebrities demonstrating "how those who have found the M&M's inside themselves embrace the fun side of life." The 2008 season marks Mars U.S.'s 15th year as a primary sponsor in Nascar's premiere division. Mars joined the series in 1990, running its first three seasons under the Snickers brand. After serving as an associate sponsor for four seasons, the company returned with the Skittles colors in 1997 and transitioned to M&M's in 1999. The Gibbs sponsorship will run for three years.
Early-arriving visitors to each of a dozen or so parks and beaches in six major markets on Saturday encountered hundreds of colorful super-sized (six feet long) bamboo beach towels with Dell logos arranged in checkerboard mosaic patterns. Dell was set to distribute 15,000 towels in all. Upon taking possession of their new summer accessory, consumers found attached hangtags promoting the Dell Summer Rocks Sweepstakes--which will award 10 pairs of tickets to the Austin City Limits Music Festival in Dell's hometown, Sept. 26-28. The Austin event, in turn, is just one of six music festivals that are part of the Dell Summer Rocks Tour. And it's all part of the push for Dell's new Studio laptops, which are themselves available in more than 10 color combinations. Dell, via indie agency Mother, dropped its beach towels before 9 a.m. in New York (Central Park), Los Angeles (Griffith Park and Hermosa Beach Pier), Chicago (Navy Pier, Loyola Park Beach, Foster Beach), Miami (beach near Trump International), and Seattle (Madison Park, Matthew's Beach Park, Gasworks Park). In Austin, the drop was set to coincide with a lunch event at a Lake Travis restaurant. And Sunday afternoon, a final drop was planned in time for a concert by MGMT at Brooklyn's trendy McCarren Park Pool Parties. In addition to Austin City Limits, the Dell Summer Rocks Tour, featuring an experiential geodesic Dell Dome, will visit Lollapalooza (Chicago, Aug. 1-3), Virgin Mobile (Baltimore, Aug. 9-10), Outside Lands (San Francisco, Aug. 22-24), Bumbershoot (Seattle, Aug. 30-Sept. 1) and Monolith (Morrison, CO, Sept. 13-14). The outside of the Dell Dome will serve as a giant canvas for artist Mike Ming, whose designs also adorn the Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop. Inside the dome, Ming will create a new artwork at each festival, and will provide festival-goers with original airbrush tattoos. The dome also includes stations where festival-goers can create 20-track digital mix tapes from a menu of up to 100 songs; a hair salon, where stylists will create iconic rock star hairdos; and custom heat iron transfers for shorts, bags and scarves. "The Dell Dome is a multimedia playground that celebrates self-expression and promotes sharing through art, music and design," explains Lisa Hassel, experiential marketing manager for Dell's consumer business. "The combination of technology and recreation adds unique depth and dimensions to the music festival experience." Consumers can enter the sweepstakes and access an array of other features and downloads at delllounge.com/summerrocks.
Now that the government has finished mailing out all its rebate checks, observers are still trying to track which sectors, exactly, got stimulated. Retail experts, appearing before Congress last week, say that rising gasoline and grocery prices sucked up much of the juice rebates were supposed to inject into the economy, and asked for an additional economic stimulus package. "Results are better than they would have been if Congress had not enacted the tax rebates," an executive from the National Retail Federation told a congressional hearing. "But consumer spending remains subdued because of the stresses of declining home values, escalating fuel and food costs, increasing unemployment and weak financial markets. We believe that a compelling case can be made for providing additional economic stimulus legislation." Citing June polling data, the NRF says consumers who had received their rebate checks had spent 42.9%, "but that nearly half of the money spent had gone to gasoline (9.7%) or necessities such as groceries (10.4%)." Clothing and apparel, the next-largest category, got a scant 3.3%. Consumers said 25.2% of the money went to pay off debt and 17.1% went into savings. A separate NRF poll found that 20% of consumers had set aside some of their rebate money for back-to-school shopping. Of course, what consumers say they plan to do and then actually follow through on can be quite different. A newer survey from Precima, a retail analytics firm, conducted after almost all the checks were mailed, finds that 84% of consumers say they did not use the check they received from the federal government to purchase groceries. Nor does it appear that many used it to pay down debt. Checks started going out in May, and when the Federal Reserve released those numbers recently, consumers had actually boosted their borrowing in May at an annual rate of 3.6%, mostly reflecting heavy credit-card use.
Yellowpages.com launched a billboard outdoor advertising campaign this month in five target markets from Detroit to Sacramento, Calif. The campaign, designed by WPP Group's Mediaedge:cia and created by GSD&M Idea City in Austin, Texas, will eventually add viral media and local search. It already taps television and online ads. Matt Crowley, Yellowpages.com CMO, says the push plays into the company's initiative to help advertisers reach consumers across cellular phones, online and television ads. He says it is part of parent company AT&T's three-screen strategy to provide services not offered by other Internet-based business-to-business or business-to-consumer search companies. Yellowpages.com, for example, offers mobile ads as part of its package of services, along with video business profiles. Consumers can download and share the video, which acts as a widget, or post to other sites. The television channel 97 on AT&T's U-verse service lets consumers search for local businesses, too. Search capabilities for mobile, online and television allow Yellowpages.com advertisers reach more consumers on a variety of devices. Taking advantage of AT&T's partnership with Apple as part of that strategy, Yellowpages.com designed a cell phone application for the iPhone that lets consumers find and share business information based on local search. The application built on Apple's software development kit launched July 10. Apple iPhone demonstration kiosks at AT&T Mobility and Apple retail stores promote the free-for-download-to-consumers app. Flyers in the stores tell consumers where to find them. AT&T also preinstalled a software application, known as a client, on select phones available in its stores. The software client lets consumers access Yellowpages.com on their handset. "The search feature is on millions of devices today, but it will reach tens of million by the end of the year," Crowley says. "The preinstalled applications and special treatment from Apple in AT&T stores makes a huge difference in the amount of traffic we can drive through mobile applications." Apple reported selling more than 1 million iPhone 3G handsets just three days after it became available in its retail and AT&T Mobility stores. Tina Teng, iSuppli analyst, estimates that Apple will sell 8.8 million 3G iPhones this year. This is good news for Yellowpages.com, especially on weekends when mobile traffic reaches peak use. The company typically experiences double-digit searches from consumers on handsets during those two days. "In many cases [these searches come] through the mobile application as well as our Web site," Crowley says. As for rival Yellowbook.com, customers are rapidly moving to upgrade their advertising to reach consumers through video and mobile ads, according to the company's CMO Gordon Henry. "We began testing video ads earlier this year and started rolling them out this summer," he says. "The sales force and some business-to-business advertising will highlight the service to customers, but there won't be a national media campaign. We tend to use national media to talk about the brand, not a specific service." The billboard is running in five markets: Atlanta, Orlando, St. Louis, Detroit, and Sacramento. Yellowpages.com has more than 140 million searches per month and was ranked No. 26 in comScore's top 100 URLs for May 2008. Mobile searches have increased more than 50% from September 2007 to March 2008.
In another example of food marketers' growing public support of efforts aimed at curbing childhood obesity, Kellogg's and Whole Foods Market will be among the sponsors of the "Fun and Fit as a Family" mini-festival within the 2009 Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival. The South Beach, Fla.-based festival, to be held Feb. 19-22, established the two-day supplementary "Fun and Fit" mini-fest on nearby Jungle Island last year. The new area, featuring exhibitions and activities informing parents and children about adopting healthy eating habits and combating childhood obesity, drew 9,000 parents and children last year. Kellogg's will relocate its existing "Kellogg's Kidz Kitchen" events from the festival's main beach location to the "Fun and Fit" area for 2009. The three-year-old Kidz Kitchen concept features culinary demonstrations with a healthy focus by star chefs. Past stars have included Rachael Ray, Giada De Laurentiis, Emeril Lagasse and Jamie Oliver. The fitness-fest sponsorship ties in with Kellogg's announcement that it is applying "Kellogg Global Nutrient Criteria" (based on a "broad review of scientific reports") to all products currently marketed to children around the world. Products that do not meet the criteria will either be reformulated or will no longer be marketed to children under 12 by the end of 2008. Whole Foods will be a supporting sponsor of the "Fun and Fit" area is in addition to its status as a new platinum sponsor of the overall festival and new title sponsor of the main event's "Grand Tasting Village." In the Tasting Village, the retailer will showcase foods/culinary creations available in its stores. The Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival, going into its eighth year, attracted nearly 40,000 visitors and raised $1.7 million for the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Florida International University in 2008. The event is presented by Food & Wine magazine and produced by the university and Southern Wine & Spirits of Florida, with support from regional government.
Residents of: 1. Los Angeles 2. Rochester, N.Y. 3. Harrisburg/Lancaster/Lebanon/York, Pa. 4. Orlando/Daytona Beach/Melbourne, Fla. 5. Springfield/Holyoke, Mass. 6. Syracuse, N.Y. 7. San Diego, Calif. 8. Atlanta 9. San Francisco/Oakland/San Jose 10. Philadelphia Source: MRI's Market-by-Market study