Month: January 2015
Tweet #VolvoContest during a Super Bowl Car Commercial and you could put someone in a new Volvo!
If you want to enjoy some chicken wings on Super Bowl Sunday you’d better stock up on them now! The National Chicken Council says it estimates that Americans will eat 1.25 billion wings this Sunday to celebrate the Big Game. We in western New York love our chicken wings. In fact the Buffalo Bills treated the Detroit Lions to Buffalo wings to thank them for letting the Bills play a Monday night game in their stadium when Ralph Wilson Stadium was buried in snow!
The National Retail Federation says it expects 184 million fans to tune in to Super Bowl XLIX, and that the average viewer will spend $77.88 to celebrate. That adds up to $14.3 billion! That’s shows how powerful the NFL is for this economy. Let’s not have any more of this Deflate-Gate nonsense!
Volvo just announced something interesting that they’re doing this year to tap into those 184 million fans! There are many automotive brands that are running an ad during the Super Bowl 49 broadcast, but not Volvo. Instead it wants viewers to Tweet when one of their competitor’s ad is running. This promotion “The Greatest Interception Ever,” invites fans to tweet its hashtag, #VolvoContest, during other car brands’ Super Bowl commercials. This contest asks fans to nominate someone they feel deserves to win a new Volvo XC60. Volvo says it wants to focus on real people rather than its own marketing message. Check out their promotional video here:
The Who Would You Put in a Volvo? Contest details are on their promotional website www.volvointerception.com. The contest starts when the game starts, at 6:30 pm on Sunday. Once the participate see another car commercial they have to tweet using the #volvocontest hashtag and state who they would put in a brand new Volvo.
After the required Tweet is sent, Volvo will send a Tweet back to that participant with a link to the contest’s entry form. Participant then needs to fill out and submit the entry form and include a statement identifying who their nominee is and why they are nominating this person. Nominee statement must be no more than 75 words and nominee must be a living person in the U.S. who has a valid driver’s license and 18 years of age of older. Each participant can nominate only one person and should have that person’s permission before they nominate them.
At the end of the contest period, which is 11:59 pm ET, a panel of judges will choose 5 potential winners based on the following criteria: (a) extent to which the Nominee demonstrates passion for the Volvo brand (10%); (b) extent to which the Nominee demonstrates generosity of spirit (30%); (c) extent to which the Nominee demonstrates how they inspire (30%) and (d) overall impression(30%).
Once the winners are verified 5 prizes will be awarded to the nominees, not the winners. Each nominee will receive a Volvo XC60 along with a $5,000 check. Total prize value is $46,205. The nominee will be responsible for all taxes, registration, insurance and title.
Now Volvo isn’t a sponsor of the NFL or Super Bowl, so they have been very careful in all their promotional communications, including the Contest Official Rules, not to mention the Super Bowl. Instead they refer to it as the “professional football championship game taking place on February 1, 2015, at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona”. I would think that the other car brands that have paid big money to run their ads (BMW, Kia, Lexus, Nissan and Mercedes-Benz) are not happy with this promotion either. You can view some of the ads that will be running here on YouTube’s AdBlitz.
I’m looking forward to watching “The Big Game” this Sunday and eating some chicken wings. Hope it’s at least a good one, not like last year’s blowout! Don’t forget to vote for your favorite ad here on AdBlitz.
Our hometown, Rochester, NY, has been selected as the hometown winner in the Pepsi Hyped for Halftime, Hype Your Hometown Contest. This national contest invited people to bring halftime to their hometown and also win tickets to this year’s Pepsi Super Bowl XLIX Halftime show featuring Katy Perry.
Haley Biemiller a 19 year old from Irondequoit (a Rochester suburb) calls herself Katy Perry’s biggest fan. She organized her family and friends to enter the contest more than 500 times. Pepsi’s judges chose Haley and 17 other grand prize winners from Rochester. They will each choose a guest for a total of 39 lucky people who will be receiving round-trip airfare to Arizona, 5 day/3 night hotel accommodations at a Scottsdale resort and passes to be on the field and to see Katy Perry during the Super Bowl Halftime show in the University of Phoenix Stadium.
The contest invited participants to submit either photos or videos that matched the Hyped for Halftime theme. Each participant was allowed up to 5 submissions a day during the contest period which ran from November 26 – December 29, 2014. So Haley set up a photo studio in her house where she took hundreds of photos of her local group that included Pepsi products and “Hyped for Halftime” posters and props. The group made sure everyone submitted the maximum of five entries per day, every day.
All approved submissions are still displayed in the contest’s photo gallery on the website. Lindsay Balzano, one of the winners also from Irondequoit was quoted as saying “When we looked at the site, we made up a good majority of all the collective photos,” she said. “We had 86 pages of just Rochester people of 126 total pages.” Lindsay received the phone call notifying her that she was a winner while out to dinner with Hailey and another friend. “I got so excited and I couldn’t hear because I was so happy about it,” she said. “Haley’s face got bright red and she started crying. It was indescribable.”
The submissions were judged by an independent panel based on originality and creativity; embodiment of the “Hyped for Halftime” campaign; total hometown participation; and public voting. Rochester submitted a total 509 entries, which was selected as the Hometown Prize winner.
So now Pepsi is bringing the hype to Rochester. This Sunday, Jan. 18, they will be hosting a free concert in downtown Rochester featuring pop/hip-hop duo Nico & Vinz. The duo is best known for their single, “Am I Wrong”. According to this Democrat & Chronicle article in our local newspaper, Pepsi will also be delivering some extra hype with surprises popping up around Rochester leading up to the event including a mobile Hype Squad and vending machines that will offer a chance to win VIP passes or meet and greets.
During last week’s playoff game on Saturday between the Patriots and the Ravens, Katy Perry announced that she invited Lenny Kravitz to be one of her special guests joining her during the Super Bowl Halftime show. She hinted that there may be others to announce soon. More than 115 million viewers in the U.S. watched last year’s show.
This weekend we have two more great football games between four teams to watch. In my last Super Bowl post I mentioned that I was routing for the Green Bay Packers who are now moving on in the Road to the Super Bowl. Unfortunately the season ended for the Cowboys, Bronco’s, Panthers and the Ravens. However, the excitement for next season for the Buffalo Bills has risen tremendously here with the announcement that Rex Ryan is the new head coach! Can’t wait.
Yes, we are based in Rochester, NY and our company had nothing to do with this contest.
The Seattle Seahawks managed to get back in the game this past Sunday and beat the Green Bay Packers in overtime — after being behind for much of the entire game. So that means they’re again headed to the Super Bowl. They play against the New England Patriots, who beat the Indianapolis Colts in a no game in the rain, 45-7. However there is an issue whether the game balls were intentionally deflated. Not that the NFL needed one more problem to add to their worries this season. The League is investigating whether the Patriots actually deflated balls to make them easier to grip in the heavy rain. But the game will go on in Arizona on February 1 as planned!
My home town of Rochester, NY won the Hyped for Halftime Contest and instead of watching the Patriots hammer the Colts, many people here enjoyed a free connect downtown sponsored by Pepsi. The concert featured hip-hop duo Nico & Vinz known for their hit “Am I Wrong”. It also included a special appearance from the Buffalo Bills brand new head coach, Rex Ryan, and their rookie of the year wide receiver, Sammy Watkins. There was also small, private meet-and-greet sessions with these celebrities that people could win through radio giveaways or select cans of Pepsi that were being dispensed from the free vending machines. See this huge Pepsi display in the entrance of our East Ave. Wegmans store. I tried to get a free can from this one, but it was empty!
YouTube’s AdBlitz is back for another year, allowing people to view and choose their favorite campaigns from Super Bowl ads. This year the site will live stream their own halftime show. So instead of watching Katy Perry’s Halftime Show from the stadium, viewers can turn to YouTube where they will feature more than 20 YouTube creators and musicians including Harley Morenstein from Epic Meal Time, Freddie Wong, Rhett & Link, and Toby Turner, among others.
At the conclusion of the Super Bowl game, viewers are invited to cast their vote on the site for their favorite Super Bowl commercials. Voting will last a week, ending on Feb. 9, and then the winners will be revealed. The site also will have a post-game content gallery where advertisers can continue the conversation with their viewers by providing behind-the-scenes footage of their Super Bowl spot.
Last year Budweiser was considered to have “won” the TV ad game with its “Puppy Love” spot, despite the fact that it didn’t air until the last minutes of a blowout game. But Budweiser had posted the ad on YouTube a week in advance and it spread. So Budweiser plans to do the same this year with three ads, including a sequel to “Puppy Love.” Can’t wait for that.
The spot generated over 54 million online views and over 2.6 million social interactions. To compare, that’s twice the number of online views and five times the social interaction rate of the second-ranking spot, the Jaguar “Rendezvous” campaign — which also had significant pre-game buildup.
We now continue down the Road to the Super Bowl and have a week and a half to get further hyped for the game. Honestly I don’t really care who wins this Super Bowl game, but I will be watching nonetheless.