February 2014 - American Sweepstakes

Seven years a blogger and Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty turns ten

I wrote my first blog post on my personal blog, Donna’s Promo Talk, on February 27, 2007. With today’s blog post, I am celebrating my 7th year of being a blogger. I have developed a few traditions over the years in my blog postings, such as covering the Olympic Games and the Super Bowl which I just completed. Another tradition I follow is to celebrate my blog’s birthday by writing about the same brand that I devoted my first blog post about, and one brand that I truly admire, which is Dove.

In 2004, Dove launched their “Campaign For Real Beauty”. Now, ten years later, Dove has teamed up with an emerging female filmmaker to create Selfie, the latest Dove documentary that still seeks to widen the definition of beauty. Selfie features a group of real women as they celebrate refreshing revelations of their unique beauty. Here’s a look at the short version:

Dove is now inviting everyone to join the conversation and share what beauty means to you at #beautyis and at www.dovebeautyis.com. Participants can just share their thoughts with 140 characters or less or they have the option to upload a photo or video. Dove’s most recent research study, The Real Truth About Beauty, reveled the following:

Only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful (up from 2% in 2004)
Only 11% of girls globally are comfortable describing themselves as ‘beautiful’
72% of girls feel tremendous pressure to be beautiful
80% of women agree that every woman has something about her that is beautiful but do not see their own beauty
More than half (54%) of women globally agree that when it comes to how they look, they are their own worst beauty critic

Dove has created self-esteem building educational programs and activities that encourage, inspire and motivate girls around the world to reach their full potential. They claim to have reached more than 9 million girls so far with this programming and have set a global goal of reaching 15 million girls by 2015. If you’re interested in getting involved you can check out these tools and resources Dove has pulled together.

I am a member of Dove Insider and receive email updates from them that include special offers, new product information and exclusive savings and promotions. Right now Dove is featuring their new Dove Advanced Hair Series products and inviting members to write a review, or simply state why they would like to try one of these new products, for a chance to instantly win a $25 Amazon Gift Card. They have up to 200 electronic gift cards to be given away up till March 31. At that time they will conduct a second chance drawing to award any remaining gift cards.

Looking back on the previous blog posts I’ve written about Dove I noticed that two years ago I was at my computer and clicked over to the Dove Facebook page to see what they were up to. To my surprise I found that Dove had just converted to the new Facebook Timeline. Dove was one of the first brands that Facebook partnered with to roll out their new Timeline for business pages. It’s hard to believe that was just two years ago. Today Dove is using the social media platform to further invite fans to share what they feel Beauty Is.

I’m very happy to still be blogging after seven years. My birthday celebration wouldn’t be complete without thanking my good friend and founder of the Lipsticking blog and BlogPaws, Yvonne DiVita, along with her business partner and now husband, Tom Collins, for helping me get started. Thanks again and thanks to all my readers for sticking with me.

Thank You Mom Campaign from P&G scores gold at the Olympic Games

The Winter Olympic Games in Sochi are now way into their second week and Team USA has been amazing as well as many of the other athletes. What I love about the Games the most is hearing some of the personal stories about the athletes. Like Meryl Davis and Charlie White who just claimed the first ice dancing gold medal for USA. They have grown up together and skating since they were three years old. So I can’t let these Games go by without writing about Procter & Gamble’s “Thank You, Mom” campaign which by all accounts has scored gold.

P&G’s “Pick Them Back Up” TV spot taps into such a universal emotion that every time I watch it, I still tear up! Jodi Allen, Procter & Gamble’s VP of North American marketing and brand operations best summarized this as follows: “Mom’s contributions to their kids’ lives are full of incredible sacrifices. We’re so moved by these moms and the way they help their children overcome obstacles to achieve their dreams. We celebrate the person that helped get each athlete there and who picked them up each time they fell — mom!”

Bounty paper towels, one of P&G’s many brands, launched a contest as part of their “Bring It” campaign. where they invited sports moms to share how they encourage their aspiring athlete to practice in the home “despite the mess”! Moms posted on Twitter using the hashtag #BringIt to share their messy stories. Bounty received thousands of tweets and had to chose one mom to receive the grand prize which was an ultimate Olympic Games at-home celebration and a year’s supply of Bounty.

Molly Woll from Minneapolis, MN, and her story about her 7-year old aspiring athlete daughter won the grand prize. Both were treated to an Ultimate Olympic Winter Games Viewing Party on February 16 in their home. Molly’s story described taking her daughter to early morning (and evening) practices, foregoing family vacations to pay for hockey fees and taking on a second job, and even letting her practice inside their home!

For each Tweet, Bounty donated $1 to the P&G Team USA Youth Sports Fund which ended up as a $10,000 total donation to help encourage new Olympians. As part of the “Thank You, Mom” campaign, P&G offered their “Thanks” to all 357 moms of US Olympians & Paralympians with a gift of a $1,000 VISA gift card to help them on their journey to Sochi. Thank you to P&G and all the moms.

As I write this I’m thinking of my own two daughters, and while not Olympic athletes, we are celebrating today the 24th birthday of my first child, Kelsey, who has grown into a beautiful young lady. I believe that I contributed to her being accepted into NYU’s Tisch School of Drama and continue in helping to make her dream a reality. Also I am so proud of my other daughter, Alex, who is in her second semester at Veterinary School. We wish you a very happy birthday Kelsey.

PinSanity Game from Team USA helps to kick off the Sochie 2014 Winter Olympic Games

The Sochie 2014 Winter Olympic Games are now in full swing and will run through February 23, 2014. I became hooked right away when I started watching the first prime time program which aired the night before the Opening Ceremony and introduced us all to Slopestyle snowboarding. We were immediately disappointed to learn that Shaun White decided to drop out of this competition at the last minute, but our disappointment didn’t last long once we met the other athletes and saw both the US men and women sweep the gold here.

6,000 athletes and team members from 85 countries are taking part in these Olympic Winter Games. 98 sets of medals are being contested in 7 Olympic sports, which is 12 more than at the Vancouver Games in 2010, and 14 more than the Turin Games in 2006. Much of the same Worldwide Olympic Sponsors are back, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Visa, Samsung, General Electric, Procter & Gamble, Omega, Panasonic, Dow and Atos. NBC Sports again has the rights to broadcast the games in the United States and has extended their contract through till 2020. NBC is featuring all of the events live online and will also broadcast events live and taped on their various channels.

Facebook is also a great way to follow all that is going in with the games, the athletes, the sponsors and NBC. NBC’s Facebook page has exclusive coverage, video interviews with athletes and extra content from Sochi and is integrating Instagram photos as well. Most athletes have their own official Facebook pages, where you can follow their journeys in Sochi.

The U.S.Olympic Committee has launched a Facebook page that includes a social-media and mobile game around pin trading. It’s called Team USA Pinsanity. Pin trading first became popular in the 1980s and involves the buying, selling and trading of commemorative pins at Olympic Games. It has since been called the No. 1 spectator sport during the Olympic Games.To get started “Lisa”, the game’s guide, takes you through a brief intro and provides you with a welcome pin that you can display on your pin board. Participants in this virtual pin trading game can enter for a chance to convert online pins into real-life prizes through the PinSanity Pin of the Week Sweepstakes.

The Sweepstakes is divided up into 10 weekly entry periods which began on December, 23 and ends on February 23. Any Pinsanity player who collects the Pin of the Week will be entered in a random drawing to win the weekly prize. This week it’s the Sochi Opening Ceremony pin and the prize is a pair of Team USA gloves. Four other randomly selected winners will also receive discount codes good towards purchases at teamusashop.com. Players can collect the pin via various methods which include winning it through Daily Spin. trading for it in the Daily Trade, answering correctly the Daily Trivia, purchasing it through the Pinsanity Shop, redeeming codes, finding it in a Pin Pack, or getting it as a gift from a friend.
The Official Rules also include an alternate means of entry which is by sending an email with their name and address to [email protected].

The Games so far have been receiving lots of social media buzz. I received an interesting Infographic today that the team at UberVU and Hootsuite released that have been tracking social conversations around the 2014 Sochi Olympics in the various platforms. From the opening ceremonies to the closing ceremonies and every event in between, they are analyzing what topics social cares about most and awarding those making the biggest splash with its very own gold medal. Unfortunately not all the topics have been positive. Take a look at the image below. Enjoy the rest of the Games.

Best Super Bowl Campaign is the Esurance Twitter Sweepstakes

Many had feared and predicted on how the weather was going to be a big factor during Super Bowl 48 and it wasn’t. What we didn’t predict is that the Denver Broncos weren’t going to be a factor either! The Seattle Seahawks dominated the entire game and won their first Super Bowl in their franchise history with a 43-8 win over the Broncos. Congrats Seahawks.

All the brands were there though with their millions of dollars worth of TV ads. Fox reported that the actual Super Bowl had attracted 112.2 million viewers. The major difference this year is that is wasn’t all about the TV broadcast. Most of the marketing folks joined the social media world in a big way. They learned that if they were going to spend that kind of money, then they better not waste it just on 30 seconds of airtime. As most everyone is now aware, the majority of ads could be viewed before the game on either the brands’ social media sites and on YouTube’s Ad Blitz Channel. More than half of all ads (57%) that aired during the game this year included a hashtag, such as Chevy’s #SilveradoStrong and Coke’s #AmericaIsBeautiful,. That’s up from 50% last year and 7% the year before when Audi was the first by including the hashtag #ProgressIs at the end of it’s 60 second spot.

As Facebook turns 10 years old this week, they are also celebrating that they got five specific mentions in Super Bowl ads, compared to Twitter’s four. Twitter however reported that during Sunday’s telecast more than 24.9 million Tweets about the game and halftime show were sent. I have to admit that I started following the Tweets on Twitter, but found there was no way to keep up with them and watch the game and the ads at the same time. I found many Tweets that were not even related to the game or the ads, but used a relevant hashtag anyhow.

A brand new Twitter sweepstakes was announced during the first ad after the game ended by the folks at Esurance, the online insurance company. They stated that it cost them $1.5 million less, (about 30%) to run the ad after the game then during it, so instead they are awarding one lucky winner that money. To participate you had to tweet the hashtag #EsuranceSave30 and post the Tweet by 1 pm PT on Tuesday in order to be eligible for the random drawing. I posted it and I haven’t been notified yet that I won. They are planning to announce the winner on Jimmy Kimmel Live! later today.

This campaign is now being called the best ever in Super Bowl history. There were 1 billion impressions that Esurance received online in less than 48 hours following the SuperBowl, which made it the most viewed and talked about event of the year. 200,000 Esurance tweets were sent out in the one minute after the game. Here’s
mine:

Danny Miller from Esurance stated that as of yesterday they had more than 2.9 million #EsuranceSave30 tweets and they were the #1 Twitter trend in the U.S. for most of the day. They also saw a big spike in traffic to the Esurance website as well as had 50 articles written about them, not including this post. He stated that Esurance has run many contests and sweepstakes on social media in the past, and they will continue to do so.

So will this promotion now result in many other brands running a similar campaign that integrates TV with social media? We would love to see more promotions advertised on TV, but not all have to have a $1.5 million dollar prize to be a success. The big question as always is, will Esurance also see a spike in their sales? Oreo did after their Tweet last year during the Super Bowl, so we’ll have to wait and see if Esurance shares that information.

I also wanted to mention who the winners were in a couple of the other contests that were integrated with the Super Bowl telecast. I picked the winners correctly in the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Contest that I wrote about a couple of weeks ago. “Time Machine” by Ryan Andersen got my vote and his ad ran in the first quarter of the game and was the $1 million dollar First Place winner. “The Cowboy Kid” by Amber Gill I felt would have great public appeal and that ad ran towards the end of the fourth quarter as was the Second Place winner who received $50,000. Congrats to both winners.

The other winner I want to congratulate is from the Intuit Small Business, Big Game Contest. The judges here had narrowed it down to four Finalists and would run an ad during the game for the grand prize winner that the brand’s agency created specifically for that small business. The votes came in and GoldieBlox, a small business that makes construction toys for girls to encourage more female engineers is the winner. This was one of the few commercials we did not see until it ran during game. Congratulations Debbie, the CEO, and to the entire team at GoldieBlox.

That’s a wrap for Super Bowl 48. Check back next week as we provide some promotional marketing insights into the Sochi Winter Olympic Games.