Getting viewers’ attention amid the plethora of often-frantic fast-food TV ads out there gets more difficult by the day. But a new campaign from Bojangles’ Restaurants isn’t likely to go unnoticed. Charlotte, N.C.-based agency BooneOakley agency came up with three 30-second spots with humorous, over-the-top visual pay-offs fitting the outsized nature of the product launch: the chain’s Big Bo Box. Big Bo, about the size of a small moving box, can easily hold enough chicken, biscuits, “fixin’s” and iced tea for a large family, office gathering, or tailgating party (prices start at $19.99). The most startling spot – a bit surreal, in a goofy kind of way -- shows one surgeon marveling to another about how the Bo Box is big enough to feed “the whole team,” and even includes tea. Surgeon #2, expecting to make an impression, reveals that he has surgically switched his hands with his feet. Surgeon #1, pointing to the box: “[But] this holds tea!” The other two spots pivot on a “trophy wife” at a tailgating party and finding a “fountain of youth” in a home for seniors. The tailgating spot launched this month, and the “surgeons” and “fountain/seniors” ads will break in November and first-quarter 2012, respectively. The TV ads are airing in regional broadcast, including Sunday/Sunday night and SEC football, plus prime-time shows such as “Two and a Half Men,” “NCIS,” “House,” “Bones,” “Dancing with the Stars” and “The X-Factor.” Bojangles, headquartered in Charlotte, has 500-plus locations in 10 states, primarily in the Southeast (Mississippi to Florida, Washington, D.C., and north to Pennsylvania). The campaign also includes two 30-second radio spots and in-store promotions.
The Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show in Las Vegas, slated for early November, is kind of like the auto version of Fashion Week, but with cars and trucks instead of tall, skinny women. Yes, SEMA is where automakers show off versions of their vehicles "dressed" by aftermarket parts designers, customizers and audio and entertainment equipment gurus who like to drink too much Red Bull and then see how many speakers, turntables and mixer boards they can shove into a subcompact car's back seat. One of the cars at SEMA will, in fact, be a Hyundai Veloster with two turntables, mixers, speakers, and even an electric guitar on the ceiling. Go figure. While the show, like those high-end runway events, is not open to the general public, SEMA also speaks volumes about how marketers position their more prosaic vehicles to the hoi polloi. The customized vehicles at SEMA offer a look at the psychographic archetypes designers and marketers use to position different vehicles and how the people who fit those archetypes are likely to customize land accessorize their rides. And it's a big clue to the aftermarket people in attendance about what kinds of gear they might want to design for the different cars, as well. Beyond looks, power also tends to prevail at SEMA, with cars getting lots of extra muscle to go with -- often outrageous -- looks. Here's a review at what a few automakers:
Celebrity Cruises is collaborating with Rodale Inc. to offer a new series of interactive onboard activities themed around healthy eating choices. The first initiative is themed around Rodale's New York Times best-selling "Eat This, Not That!" series. Celebrity's version of "Eat This, Not That!" is an interactive trivia game that challenges guests' knowledge of healthy eating and promotes ways to make smart, healthy choices when dining out. "Cook This, Not That!" is a cooking demonstration that highlights ways to get the most flavor and nutrition for fewer calories when cooking at home. "Drink This, Not That!" is a mixology demonstration that presents tips for serving up tasty libations while avoiding unnecessary calories. Celebrity’s partnership with Rodale is a “brilliant stroke” by both companies, says Bob Levinstein, CEO of CruiseCompete, an online service that helps cruisers find the best deal by having top travel agencies compete. “This move will increase sales for Celebrity and CruiseCompete travel agents, as today’s consumer is very health-conscious -- not to mention this will help debunk the cruise myth of overindulging with food,” Levinstein tells Marketing Daily. “Although this data is not part of our CruiseTrends report, CruiseCompete’s customer service director tells me we receive requests almost daily for fitness-theme cruises.” Celebrity and Prevention Magazine, one of Emmaus, Penn.-based Rodale's longest-running publications, are developing additional wellness-focused activities, including enrichment talks led by health and wellness experts from the title. "Our guests have told us how fulfilling our wellness activities are, particularly in a world where schedules are hectic and vacation time is so precious," said Dominique Bonavita, director, product development, Miami-based Celebrity Cruises, in a statement. "The collaboration with Rodale is a new evolution of programming that enriches our guests' lives long after their cruise, and we couldn't be more excited about all that we're offering and all that is yet to come." "Eat This, Not That!" offers consumers simple choices that help them take control of their health and wellness. It has sold over six million copies since 2007, and has spawned branded extensions including "Drink This, Not That!," "Cook, This, Not That!," the ‘Eat This, Not That! No-Diet Diet" and the "Eat This, Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide." The series also has expanded into new media including the digital, mobile and social spaces.
Despite rising food prices, consumers (at least for the most part) have made relatively few changes to their grocery shopping and eating habits. But a new study indicates they might rethink core purchases, including basics like milk and cereal, soon: The annual Accenture Pricing Shopping Survey reports that while more than one-third have yet to change their food-buying behavior, 81% of shoppers are fretting about food prices rising even higher this year. While only 30% have switched a portion of their shopping from supermarkets and convenience stores to discount stores and warehouse clubs, and even fewer (just 20%) say they have changed the products they purchase, a whopping 70% of middle-income shoppers say they will make bigger changes if prices rise again. Specifically, 79% say they intend to switch to generic products if prices rise by 10% or more. And if prices rise by 20%, they say they will simply give them up. “We found quite a few people, especially younger people and those at the lower end of the income spectrum, weren’t just making food tradeoffs,“ Ray Florio, pricing strategy manager for Accenture, tells Marketing Daily. “They were shuffling around the total wallet.” For example, many said that if gas prices were to decline, they would reallocate those funds to their food budget. Coupons are one way of coping -- and 40% of the survey, which included 1,000 adults, says they use them. And 37% belong to a daily deal site, to get savings that way. Some behaviors have already changed more radically: 51% say they have been eating out less often. “If prices rise another 10%, we’ll begin to see bigger changes,” he says. “They won’t stop buying things like milk or cereal, but they will change how they buy them. They’ll switch to store brands, for example. And marketers will change too, as they already have with laundry sold in concentrate form. We expect to see more cereal sold in bags, for example, instead of cardboard boxes, as a way to keep prices low. ”
A biologist studying shark behavior, an expedition team to the South Pole, a volunteer firerighter and an explorer rowing solo across the Pacific Ocean are out to show the rest of the world how durable labels from Brother International Corp. (yes, the things one puts on file folders and cupboards around the home and office) can be. Brother, maker of P-touch label maker, has enlisted seven “Extreme Office Ambassadors” to showcase exactly how durable the labels are in extreme work environments. The idea is that if the labels can survive some of the harshest environments, they can certainly handle regular office work. “One of the things about P-touch that’s the [differentiator] of our category is that we have durable laminated labels,” Linda Sanford, director of marketing for Brother Electronic Stationery Products, tells Marketing Daily. “We wanted to design a campaign that talks to the durability and sets us apart from everyone else.” Over the next six months, the so-called Extreme Office Test Team will use the labels in their working environments, posting videos and usage of the P-touch labels to a dedicated Web site, www.ptouchtough.com. In addition to the marine biologist, ocean explorer, firefighter and South Pole expedition, other extreme labelers will include a cross-country road-trip, solar astronomer and an adventurer crossing the Danakil Desert on foot. While the company is reasonably certain the labels will fare well over the six-month program, Sanford says she’s eager to see how they are used. “We’ve put these [labels] through controlled situations in our own environment, so we feel pretty confident they’ll hold up under these extreme conditions,” she says. “But that’s kind of the beauty of the campaign because we don’t know how these ambassadors are going to use them.” The initiative will be supported through television advertising (with a spot depicting how the labels are used in a firehouse -- although not the one to be depicted in the videos), as well as digital banner ads and social media outreach, all directing consumers to the ptouchtough.com Web site. The Web site will also profile mom and dad bloggers who have put the labels through their own rigorous household tests. The varied uses that many of these bloggers (as well as office workers around the country) have used the label makers for inspired the idea for the campaign, Sanford says. “Although we think of labels for file folders most of the time,” she says, “what we find in an office is it’s not just for file folders -- they’re also used as signage around offices.”
Apple, Hershey’s, and surprisingly, Sprite (not Coke or Pepsi) are three of the top brands for youth, according to the 2012 Harris Poll Youth EquiTrend study, by Harris Interactive. The annual study benchmarks the brands that America's youth prefer and those that have the ability to dominate their industries' youth market share. The study measures brand equity as an outcome of familiarity, quality, and purchase consideration among Americans ages 8 to 24. Equity, emotional connection, and brand advocacy are evaluated. Young Americans are expected to spend $211 billion in 2012, according to Harris Interactive. Companies need to remember that consumers do not magically appear at age 18, said Regina A. Corso, senior vice president for youth and education research at Harris Interactive. "Youth of today have spending power and they also have loyalty to brands,” Corso said in a statement. “Some of this comes from their parents, but they also make their own decisions. Brands who tap into this loyalty when a consumer is a tween, and nurture it through the teen years, will have an extremely loyal customer by the time the customer is a young adult." Apple is the highest-ranked computer brand, followed by Hewlett-Packard and Sony. iPad is the highest-ranked computer tablet brand, followed by Motorola Xoom and BlackBerry PlayBook, and iPhone is the highest-ranked mobile phone brand, followed by HTC Phones and Samsung Phone. Nintendo Wii is the highest-ranked gaming platform brand, followed by Sony PlayStation 3 and Nintendo DS. This is good news for Apple, and indicates that their brand is very strong, said Jeni Lee Chapman, executive vice president of Harris' Brand and Communication Consulting practice. “To have this kind of significant edge among 13- to-24-year-olds signifies that Apple has built a powerful equity base among their customers of today and their customers of tomorrow," Chapman said. "Brands often struggle to maintain relevancy among different generations. This data shows that this is not going to be an issue for Apple." In the food category, although 8- to-24-year-olds have varied interests, certain comfort foods, like cookies and candy are timeless. For example: Oreo Cookies and Hershey's Milk Chocolate Candy Bars are each highest-ranked in their respective categories, and sweet treat and cookie brands receive some of the highest equity scores among those surveyed. Following Hershey's Milk Chocolate Candy Bars in the sweet treats category are Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Hershey's Kisses. Oreo Cookies is the highest-ranked cookies brand, followed by three Chips Ahoy cookies brands (Chips Ahoy, Chewy Chips Ahoy and Chunky Chips Ahoy.) For the soda brand, Sprite is the highest-ranked brand, followed by Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola. Cheerios is the highest-ranked cereal brand, followed by Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Minute Maid is the highest-ranked fruit juice brand, followed by Tropicana and Florida's Natural Refrigerated Orange Juice. In fruit-flavored drinks, Capri Sun is the highest-ranked brand, followed by KoolAid. As for media consumption, ABC is the highest-ranked broadcast TV brand, followed by Fox Television Network and CBS. In kids' TV programming, Nickelodeon is the highest-ranked brand, followed by Disney Channel and Cartoon Network. Among the social media brands, YouTube.com is the highest-ranked brand, followed by Facebook.com. The study was conducted online among 5,077 U.S. consumers ages 8-24 in August 2011. A total of 121 brands were rated among 8- to-12-year-olds and 167 brands among 13- to-24-year-olds. Each 8- to-12-year-old respondent was asked to rate a total of 15 randomly selected brands and each 13- to-24-year-old respondent was asked to rate a total of 22 randomly selected brands. Each brand received at least 130 ratings. Data were weighted to be representative of the entire U.S. population of consumers ages 8-24 on the basis of age, sex, education, urbanicity (8- to-17-year-olds), race/ethnicity, region, parental education (8- to-17-year-olds), and income (18- to-24-year-olds), and data from respondents ages 18 and over were also weighted for their propensity to be online.
Kraft Foods is continuing its relationship as the Official Cookie of NASCAR and Stewart-Haas Racing. The company is using the relationship to promote its Oreo, Nilla and Nutter Butter and Ritz and Wheat Thins cracker brands. Kraft's partnership with Stewart-Hass racing makes the cookie and cracker Kraft brands associate sponsors of racers Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. The Northfield, IL-base packaged goods company, which has been an Official NASCAR Partner since 2000, will leverage the partnership this year to do a range of marketing programs from TV down to point-of-purchase programs with retail partners and specially marked packages of Oreo cookies and Ritz crackers for a national consumer sweepstakes. Next year, for the first time, Ritz will host a national digital and social media sweepstakes on its Facebook page where a fan will have the chance to win a prize package to go to the 2012 Sprint Cup Series Awards Ceremony. Michael Tilly, Kraft's associate director of consumer engagement, tells Marketing Daily that NASCAR has been the beneficiary of one of the longest promotional relationships Kraft has ever done. "Orio and Ritz are our flagship brands and with our portfolio of cookie and cracker products this offers great visibility for us." He says consumer activation will include traditional marketing programs, customer specific programs (customer meaning retail partner in this case), where, for example, at Dollar General, there will be a big vendor program that generates scale by involving several other CPG brands that are NASCAR sponsors. "I think Dollar General is unique because they are very supportive of the platform. We have customers that activate in different ways, but they really support it from the top of the house: they get very involved in creating marketing platforms that work with a group of brands," says Tilly. He says Dollar General incorporates Kraft's brands in its own NASCAR merchandising programs, store circulars and point-of-purchase displays, and in programs with complementary key partners, "Such as consumer solutions with snack and beverage offerings," he says.
There's nothing worse than developing a marketing campaign with a call to action that leads you nowhere. If you're slapping QR Codes on your ads, collateral or direct mail with no clear next step, your results will be disappointing. Even worse, have you seen the QR Code that is placed as artwork with nothing but white space -- looks great, but how do you expect someone to take action? You want your target audience to take a clear next step. This could be something as simple as registering for an event, calling for more info, buying a product or entering a promotion. By determining a marketing strategy prior to unleashing a QR Code campaign, many of your headaches will be eliminated. Don't forget about creating a compelling offer -- this is much is easier for some brands to craft than others. Think free shipping, free rate quotes or premiums. The value and expression of your offer will ultimately drive your ROI -- QR Codes are your delivery mechanism. Here are 5 hassle-free ways to integrate a QR Code without developing a mobile Web site while creating a clear call to action. 1. Scan to Call. QR Codes are easily enabled to directly call an appropriated telephone. This option is very effective and measurable when integrated with direct mail. A great example is a recent State Farm mail package where a QR Code was placed on the back of the letter -- the call to action was simply "Scan to Get A Rate Quote” -- you were then directly connected to a live call agent. 2. Scan to Like. Social media and mobile go hand in hand. By leveraging Facebook's mobile presence you can effortlessly gain new Likes. This tactic will also work with Twitter. I've seen Sprint place QR Codes within their mini retail stores at malls -- which has great potential, given their visibility. 3. Scan to Video. If you have great video content, chances are its already on YouTube. Simply point your QR Code to a YouTube video, and it will open and start playing with no problem. The transition to video from a QR Code is very powerful and engaging. 4. Scan to Email. The functionality of clicking on a QR Code and starting an email mirrors that of an HTML Web page. A QR Code stores up to 4,296 characters, so there is plenty of room to get it just right. Here are some tips on how to create this call to action. 5. Scan to Text. Texting and mobile are a natural fit. A QR Code is a great conduit to building trust and gaining access to a prospect or customers texting window. Eliminating any step, such as "TEXT 55555" to sign up for updates, is a major benefit. To fully take advantage of a QR Code the user experience must be taken into consideration. QR Codes that direct you to a company's desktop Web site are a laborious xperience for the end user -- if there's Flash code or video it just won't work on an IPhone, which is half the mobile market. Developing something as simple as a 3-page mobile micro site to accomplish your goals might be worth the effort. It's all about meshing your marketing goals with the target audience’s user experience. Developing a solid call to action with QR Codes requires knowledge of your target audience. The technical aspect does exist, but clearly defining user preference and comfort level are paramount for success. Trying a few different call to actions will give you the best shot to learn and maximize your ROI.