• by Staff Writers , October 10, 2007

With the boundaries of media always expanding, marketers can be endlessly creative. These finalists charted new territory.

Serious USA Inc.

Manchester United

Serious: Kathy Heslop, Chief Marketing Officer; Vince Allen, Creative Director, Laura Smith, Art Director.

Manchester: Steven Hall, General Manager, Ticketing and Membership; Mark Hargreaves, General Manager.

To drive ticket renewals for the 2007-2008 season, Serious helped Manchester United create a CD postcard that included interactive seat views, an explanation of ways to pay and seat transfer plans. It also featured a video introduction by club manager Sir Alex Ferguson and drove users to Manutd.com, where they could securely renew tickets online.

The CD generated a 54 percent response rate to various areas on Manutd.com, with 43 percent of click-throughs going to the ticket renewals portion of the site. Responses came from 28 different countries and 283 cities worldwide. The program gained greater efficiency: tens of thousands of renewals occurred ahead of schedule, and over 60 percent were through automated means.

Starcom MediaVest Group

Coca-Cola/ Sprite

SMG: Damon Bethel, Digital Director; Jonathan Hsia, Digital Associate Director; Tracey Paull, Digital Manager; Erica Rosengart, Connections Director; Ina Watkins, Connections Associate Director; Chris Owen, Connections Manager.

Coca-Cola North America: Mel Clements, Senior Interactive Brand Manager; Laurie Clark, Strategic Media Manager; Malaika Dowdell, Brand Manager.

Faced with falling sprite consumption among teens, Coca-Cola turned to Starcom to help restore the brand's connection with core youth consumers. Building on the concept of teens as avid "collectors of experiences," the agency created a mobile scavenger hunt in which teens were asked to interpret three-word text messages by taking pictures and sending them back to obey.msn.com.

The mobile campaign led to 1.5 million teens joining Sprite's "Obey Your Thirst" community and a nearly 22 percent increase in online ad awareness among the target demographic. It also contributed to a 26 percent increase in teens' weekly consumption of Sprite.

Travelzoo

Erik Qualman, Head of Marketing, North America; Mindy Joyce, Marketing Director, Brand and Public Relations; Christie Gasikowski, Senior Marketing Associate; Chris Beaucamp, Chief Executive Officer; Amanda Neville, Partner.

To cut through the marketing clutter, Travelzoo hooked up with Monster Media to install giant digital displays at the Las Vegas McCarran International Airport. Viewers passing by were able to interact with the projections - which tracked users' body movements - to learn about current deals from Travelzoo.

One display featured large slot-machine projections, which consumers could "spin" to get more travel deals. Using immersion technology, another display gave travelers the chance to star in their own ads, which were projected onto a pair of plasma screens.

The campaign resulted in over 7 million impressions by the target audience and 311,000 new subscribers to Travelzoo's database of 11 million. Traffic to the site increased by 28 percent.