It looks like Mattel's Barbie brand is safe in its No. 1 spot this year, but Disney's Hannah Montana leapt up four places on the year's hot-toy list, muscling past the Bratz crowd. And Disney's "High School Musical" items are also coming on strong, breaking the Top 10 list for girls for the first time, reports the National Retail Federation's 2008 Top Toy survey. But the big news, in a ranking that is usually all about dolls for girl and cars for boys, is that video games are appearing on the girls' list for the first time. After Barbie and Hannah, in the survey of more than 8,700 adults about their intentions to purchase toys for girls this year, are the all-doll category, followed by Bratz, Nintendo Wii, video games, Elmo, Disney High School Musical, Disney Princess and American Girl, which is also a Mattel brand. For boys, electronics still take the top spots, with video games coming in a No. 1 and Nintendo Wii at No. 2. Next are Legos, all types of cars, Transformers, Elmo, Star Wars, Hot Wheels, remote-controlled vehicles and Xbox 360. NRF executives say that the good news for parents is that "many retailers are featuring toys as loss leaders this year, heavily discounting and promoting these items to bring shoppers into stores." Kohl's is pushing a 50%-off toy sale, for example, and both Sears and its Kmart division are advertising 60%-off sales. Even Macy's is pushing bargains: Its talking plush Horton the Elephant toy, based on its new star balloon, is only $14.95, including a mini-copy of the Seuss classic, Horton Hears a Who. Toy stores appear to be cutting prices earlier to woo parents, too. KB Toys, for instance, is trumpeting a 60% off Thanksgiving sale, and Toys R Us is touting free shipping on its Elmo Live, which it named as one of the year's hottest toys.
Yellowbook.com shows off its new interactive features--such as rating local businesses--through a new advertising campaign that allows users to choose and rate the ending of the company's latest TV commercial. "The futuristic aspects in the new television commercial represent Yellowbook's commitment to continued innovation, and importantly, to helping consumers find what they're really looking for--wherever they search--today as well as tomorrow," company representative Louise Thatch tells Marketing Daily. The campaign builds upon a tagline introduced in May, "Say Yellow to the future." The spot, directed by Vadim Perelman, who directed the movie "The House of Sand and Fog," depicts a futuristic world in which a man breaks up with his girlfriend via an interactive television screen. As he's breaking up with the woman (using lines like "I need time for myself"), his scantily clad new love interest walks around behind him. The dumped woman uses the screen (by waving her fingers in the air) to find businesses such as "relationship counseling," "chain saws," "personal trainer" and "pawn shops." A voiceover asks viewers to visit the site to choose the ending they like best. "Within the new TV, the interactivity provides the entry point to see and learn about more options on yellowbook.com," Thatch says. "By engaging viewers to rate potential endings, the campaign provides an opportunity to extend the rating experience from the television creative to business listings on our site." On the Web site, users are given three choices: Healthy Heart, in which the heroine finds new love through a personal trainer; Vindication, where she encounters her former boyfriend in a store while trying on a sexy cocktail dress, and Satisfaction, where she pawns the items he left in her apartment. Users are also asked to rate those endings. Also on the landing page, users can rate and review local businesses (as well as read the ratings of others), find and download Yellowbook applications for their mobile devices and view video ads of local Yellowbook advertisers. "[Adding] ratings and reviews provides a forum for users to share comments and experiences about a business with other users," Thatch says. "Mobile is another example of providing vital local business information to Yellowbook users regardless of where they are." In related news, AT&T Inc., which publishes Yellow Pages, is renaming its advertising and publishing unit AT&T Advertising Solutions, to better reflect the scope of services--including Internet, TV, print and wireless--that it provides. In addition, the company's YellowPages.com has been renamed AT&T Interactive to account for its local search capabilities that include online and mobile platforms.
In a consumer promotion that is being billed as one of the largest not only in video gaming but professional sports, Dr Pepper will kick off its second year as a sponsor of the Major League Gamer (MLG) Web sites by featuring an MLG gaming star player on more than 175 million 20-ounce bottles of the regular and Diet Dr Pepper. Dr Pepper is sponsoring the No. 1-ranked team participating in MLG, "Str8 Rippin," and the bottles, which will debut in January, will feature an image of team superstar Tom "Tsquared" Taylor. This will mark the first time that Dr Pepper has featured any sports-league partner or sponsored professional star on its label for national distribution. Each bottle's cap will include a code that when entered in Dr Pepper's Web site will give users chances to win prizes such as Xbox consoles, television monitors, custom headphones and t-shirts--and can also earn the user online tournament points on the game site, www.gamebattles.com. The points earned, as Dr Pepper is emphasizing, make every promotion bottle "a winner" for the purchaser. Dr Pepper is also creating a promotional site that will offer hours of content about its sponsored team and team members, game-playing strategy tips and highlights of the team's 2008 season. In-store promotions will be timed to coincide with the bottles' appearance on shelves. If your brand's target audience is not young males (or you aren't one yourself), you may be unfamiliar with MLG. The MLG's family of Web sites, launched in 2002, is not gaming sites themselves; rather, their technology enables tracking and ranking of the performance of those who compete on video-gaming sites. Gamers using 40 different game titles, on any platform (PC's, as well as Xbox, Nintendo and other consoles) compete and report their results, which are checked and then reported/ranked by MLG. Is video gaming a professional sport? You bet, according to MLG. MLG has a player's association, currently including about 128 of the top-ranked players, who compete during six, live three-day weekend MLG Pro Circuit competitions each year during the official video gaming season (April through November), explains Amy Janzen, SVP marketing communications. These star players get travel stipends, and some are on contract to the tune of $250,000 over three years. "Many of these star players are in college or high school, so they are quite pleased by the ability to earn this kind of money," understates Janzen. What's the draw for a marketer like Dr Pepper, or other current sponsors such as Old Spice, Stride gum, Ball Park Franks, Panasonic and Hewlett-Packard? Over 95% of MLG's approximately 40 million site users are young males, with a particularly high concentration of those ages 16 to 24 (average age, 19), according to MLG co-founder and chairman Mike Sepso. "Actually, it's 99% male, but that sounds incredible, so I say 'over 95%,'" he adds. As marketers are well aware, young men are notoriously difficult to reach these days because they are light consumers of traditional media. "Most of their media consumption time is spent on the Web and on video games in particular," says Sepso, noting that MLG has plenty of research documenting this--along with user research showing that MLG users' passion for video games is akin to that of avid followers of NASCAR, the NFL and other major-league sports. "Young, 18-24 males are avid Dr Pepper drinkers," wrote Dr Pepper brand manager Terry Hockens in an email response to Marketing Daily queries. "With over 10 million consumers going to the [MLG] gaming Web sites each month, the partnership provides us with a unique, highly targeted way to reach this particular audience." This year, Dr Pepper's MLG sponsorship included the Dr Pepper Collegiate Challenge, a program that will award $10,000 for tuition to the nation's top collegiate video gamer. The winner will be announced in January. But wait. Don't women--or at least young women--play video games? Yes, they do, says Sepso--but few play the "highly competitive," fiercely interactive video games tracked and ranked by MLG (such as "World of Warcraft," "Gears of War," "Call of Duty 4," "Vegas 2," "Halo 3," and "Rainbow Six"). MLG's research shows that players of these games have "psychographic traits similar to those of people who compete in any type of traditional sport," Seso says. "They're highly social, tend to be trend leaders rather than followers, and compete intensely in every aspect of their lives."
As surely as actors under the tutelage of the late Lee Strasberg had to evoke a strong "sense memory" to make an impact, products need to be able to evoke a good brand memory in consumers to make it off shelves. That is especially true now, when cash is not bursting out of corporate marketing tills--meaning that there is less money to build awareness, consideration, and to generally support whatever brand iconography an agency has worked to create. Some brands have a leg up, and Chicago-based consultancy Mintel knows which they are. The firm has completed its Seventh Annual Most Memorable New Product Launch Survey, conducted by Schneider Associates. The online survey, conducted in September, tapped 1,000 respondents ages 18 and over. First the bad news. This was a terrible year for brand-building. Terrible. Rising food and gasoline prices, unemployment, the mortgage meltdown, and the political campaigns took up most of the room in consumers' cognitions. A full 69% of survey respondents could not remember a single new product launched this year, per Mintel. Only 22% of respondents remembered the most memorable new product of 2008, the Wii Fit. The firm says that for the second year in a row, technology products topped the list of most memorable launches. The iPod Touch was No. 2 after the Wii Fit, and MacBook Air and Rock Band were among the year's Top 10 most memorable launches. Lynn Dornblaser, director of Trend Insight at Mintel, says the "memorability" of a new product involves a mélange of product innovation, campaign, and parent brand equity. Surprisingly, she says, it's the latter parameter that has the most impact. Fifteen percent of respondents recalled the Bud Light Lime launch, making it the third-most-recalled launch. After Bud Lite Lime came McDonald's Southern Style Chicken Biscuit & Sandwich (14%); Kraft Mac & Cheese Crackers (13%); KY Yours + Mine Couples Lubricant (12%); Gatorade G2, Yoplait Fiber One (11% of respondents recalled them); MacBook Air, Rock Band, Burger King Apple Fries, Neosporin Neo To Go!, and Kraft Bagel-fuls (all tied with 8%). "Far and away, the greatest number of respondents said it's a trusted brand name, even with technology products," she says. Which means that to a certain extent, Apple, Nintendo, or Bud Lite names, for example, exerted as much force as the iPod, Wii, or Bud Lite products and SKUs. She said the lesson for this economy is that marketers should not sacrifice brand equity to deals, coupons and other immediate-sales messages. "One of the things that we talk about is that in times of recession, so many companies will cut back on product and promotional innovation--but this is exactly the time when that is the last thing they should be doing," she says. "They should keep upping their game; they have to keep the products in front of peoples' minds."
Global finance and insurance giant Zurich Financial Services Group is launching a new phase of its global ad campaign to generate awareness during the height of the travel season. The experiential marketing push puts first-class concierges in London's Heathrow and Germany's Frankfurt terminals, and full-time concierges in New York's Kennedy, Milan's Malpensa and Madrid's Barajas airports. The European company says the effort is intended to support its new brand mantra, "delivering when it matters." The theme was introduced with its Zurich "HelpPoint" global campaign last month in 80 countries. The concierges will help travelers with documents, hotel bookings, auto rentals, city maps, luggage carts, or wrapping paper for gift purchases. New York, Milan and Madrid will also have HelpPoint kiosks with personal concierge capabilities, matching the popularity at London and Frankfurt's HelpPoint kiosks. The new campaign arose out of research showing that less than 15% of consumers trust insurance companies and that customers find them uncaring, impersonal, and unresponsive. Sean Kevelighan, Zurich Financial's head of group media relations for North America, says the grassroots campaign is a first for the company. "It speaks well to what our repositioning is all about," he says. "We found that there is severe dissatisfaction among customers with their insurance companies. So our goal is--one, to pique [consumers'] interest, and two, to show that Zurich is an insurance company focused on delivering for them when they need it." He says Zurich will have living-room-sized venues at each airport that offer services such as document printing and even wrapping of presents and free cleaning products. The areas also have computers, counters and seating areas. In the U.S., Zurich Financial Group operates through its Farmer's Insurance subsidiary with commercial and business clientele. "Zurich offers a more personal line of services in the UK, and across Europe and the globe," says Kevelighan. He says that Zurich is planning to run the program at least through 2009, and may expand the program to other international airports and potentially to other public venues. "I think what we want to do first is make sure it is delivering; if it's successful, we would possibly take that and apply it to different venues."
Tonight at 8, Walgreens' One Times Square sign will be officially lit. It wraps three sides of the landmark, 17 stories high, the largest outdoor digital video billboard to grace New York's Great White Way.