Month: February 2016

I am celebrating my 9th birthday as a blogger this week. I published my first post on my blog, Donna’s Promo Talk, on February 27, 2007, which entered me into the new world of social media. At that time Facebook was in it’s infancy and had mostly just college users along with a few businesses that only existed as group pages. Twitter was just launched less then a year prior to this. More platforms have followed and the rest is now history,

This blog was originally started to appeal to other marketers, like myself, to help keep us up on the latest promotions, trends and legal issues affecting the industry. As we know, social media grew and so did the number of posts I have written on the integration of promotional and social media marketing. Now after 737 posts, the main focus of my original blog, as well as this one, still remain the same.

The first two posts I wrote were about one of my favorite brands, Dove. The Dove Energy Glow Contest was featured in the first and the next one was about a consumer-generated contest for Dove’s Cream Oil Body Wash. This contest invited participants to create and submit a video promoting the product which Dove would then run the winning video during the broadcast of that year’s Oscars. With the Oscars coming up this Monday, we’ll see if Dove is involved again.

Both of those contests were part of Dove’s “Campaign For Real Beauty” which they first launched in 2004 which now makes the campaign over 12 years old Each year Dove has kept the campaign new and fresh and they continue to promote the campaign’s original mission which is to widen the definition of beauty and nurture the self-esteem of young girls and women throughout the world. Dove claims that they’ve made progress, but still have a way to go.

Dove has now been running the Dove #Beauty stories campaign which encourages women to honor the women in their lives that have taught them how to live beautifully. In celebration of the iconic Dove Beauty Bar, a product that has been passed down among women for nearly 60 years, the campaign is set to inspire the next generation with the lessons, tips and advice they have learned through the power of storytelling. Here is the video they created to help kick off this campaign:

Dove has always had a certain way of tugging at our heart strings while giving us a new perspective on how we view ourselves with each of their viral campaigns. So I thank Dove for keeping this great campaign going after 12 years.

I also would like to thank all of you that have been readers and supporters over the years. You know who you are. I hope to continue blogging for sometime, so please keep reading and feel feel to comment and share your thoughts at any time.

First Book has partnered with the WWE on this year’s the WrestleMania Reading Challenge. New for 2016 is the WrestleMania Reading Challenge Sweepstakes that we are administrating and hosting on their behalf. We’ve been working directly this year with First Book, a nonprofit social enterprise that has distributed more than 135 million books and educational resources to programs and schools serving children from low-income families throughout the U.S. and Canada.

The sweepstakes encourages families to read together for 15 minutes every day, then visit the promotional website, wrestlemaniareadingchallenge.com, and submit the number of minutes they read that day to receive an entry. Once submitted the site then plays the video of the week that features a WWE Superstar thanking and inviting them to share on social media that they’ve taken the WrestleMania Reading Challenge. This one features Sasha Banks who says to “read like a “Boss” and join the WrestleMania Reading Challenge for a chance to win a trip to WrestleMania 32!”.

Two grand prize winners will each receive a trip for two to WrestleMania 32 which is scheduled to be held at AT&T Stadium in Dallas, TX, on April 3. The prize package includes round trip airfare, 3-night hotel accommodations in Dallas, two tickets to the event, ground transportation and $300 in spending cash. Four first prize winners will have 1,000 books donated from the First Book National Book Bank to each of the winner’s designated beneficiary school or program and 10 second prize winners will receive a replica WWE World Heavyweight Championship Title belt.

The WrestleMania Reading Challenge is ending this Friday, Feb. 19. As of this morning there are over 40,000 entries and thousands of minutes have been pledged. A huge social media campaign was also added this year to help get the word out. First Book and WWE have been actively posting on their social media accounts throughout the challenge and have held several Twitter parties using the hastag #WWReads. WWE helped to kick-off the challenge by creating this PSA that has aired during live TV events including Monday Night RAW and SmackDown.

WWE is also taking part in a Local Book Wish campaign in the Dallas area leading up to WrestleMania 32. Educators are encouraged to submit “book wish” requests to First Book to enter to win books from WWE for classrooms and programs from Feb. 1 to 19. One school will be selected to receive a visit from WWE Superstars, a Reading Celebration and a 1,000-book donation to their school!

“WWE is proud to partner with First Book and continue our long-standing commitment to education and literacy initiatives through the WrestleMania Reading Challenge,” said Stephanie McMahon, Chief Brand Officer, WWE. “Together, we are providing a fun and engaging experience to encourage children of all ages to read.”

So hurry up and take the challenge today. You only have a few days left to help increase that total reading pledge!

Super Bowl 50 is now history. The Denver Broncos won. They beat the Carolina Panthers 24-10. Peyton Manning said throughout Super Bowl week that it has been the Broncos’ “bruise-inflicting, quarterback-rattling defense that got us here, let’s just make that clear.” And he was so right. Cam Newton has finally gotten a slice of humility!

Lady Gaga kicked off the event with the National Anthem and proved to everyone that she really can sing! Beyonce won the halftime show were she also announced her new 2016 Formation World Tour. Fans rushed to her website and temporarily crashed it. The end of the show featured a tribute to past halftime performers including Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston which was pretty cool.

So now for the ads. Advertisers this year paid $5 million for a 30 second Super Bowl Ad. Pepsi and Budweiser where again the big sponsors. Payton Manning gave Budweiser what has been calculated to be $14 million in free advertising when he told a sideline reporter that his postgame plan was to “drink a lot of Budweiser.” Then he  mentioned the beer again a few minutes later saying, “what’s weighing on my mind is how soon I can get a Bud Light in my mouth.” In other words, don’t ask me again if I’m retiring!

For the last ever Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” contest Doritos chose to show two ads at Super Bowl 50, rather than picking one winner. “Ultrasound” by Peter Carstairs and “Doritos Dogs” by Jacob Chase were both aired. However “Doritos Dogs” was named the official winner. I stated in a previous post that I wrote about this contest that I am a sucker for any video with dogs! The winner received $1 million and a real jump start to his film making career. Doritos announced that even though this 10 year contest has come to an end it’s only the beginning. Meet the Doritos “Legion of the Bold” campaign. More to come on this.

This was definitely the year that many celebrities got in on the action. Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen for the Bud Light Party,  Ryan Reynolds was “what a man” for Hyundai and Steve Harvey, who is now famous for his Miss Universe mistake, apologized again for T-Mobile. Drake and a trio of suits managed to make an overplayed song the center of a very funny joke in T-Mobile’s Super Bowl ad. Aerosmith rocker Steven Tyler commissioned a portrait of himself made entirely of Skittles. Abby Wambach, Serena Williams and professional skateboarder and actor Tony Hawk defied labels for Mini Cooper. Christopher Walken saved a man from a lifetime of beige socks in this Super Bowl ad for Kia. One of my favorite was Helen Mirren promoting the #GiveADamn movement against drunk driving for Budweiser.

Some of my other favorites were Audi’s surprisingly emotional “Commander” that snapped an aging astronaut out of his depression and included the late David Bowie’s “Starman” as the soundtrack. The Heinz “Wiener Stampede” was so cute that included a bunch of wiener dogs in hot dog suits running in slow motion into the arms of people dressed as ketchup and mustard. Again, it’s a dog thing with me. Also, of course, is Subara’s “Dog Approved” ad that featured a golden retriever (I have a golden retriever) who is driving around in her Subaru and checks the rear view mirror where we see a puppy strapped into a car seat in the back. I love dogs doing people things, like the Dorito’s ad as well. But one ad that I laughed out load to was Honda’s new truck ad featuring sheep singing Queen’s “Somebody to Love”. It was something about those sheep and the song together.

I’ve read many different articles about all the Super Bowl ads and there was not a one ad that really stood out, like Budweiser’s lost puppy last year. But I found most entertaining. Mountain Dew’s puppy-monkey-baby that they created for their new Kickstart product I thought was pretty weird. But again, I’m not their target market.

Esurance’s ran a 30-second pregame ad and then a 1st quarter Super Bowl ad that  promoted their Pass It On Sweepstakes offering a chance to win up to $1 million in exchange for tweeting #Esurancesweepstakes. This generated huge Twitter chatter. According to data from tech company Spredfast, the brand’s Twitter mentions spiked at 6:35 p.m. when the commercial aired, generating 9,000 tweets per minute. The hashtag also trended nationally on Twitter for roughly 15 minutes.  As a whole this year, hashtags were in 45% of Super Bowl 50 ads, slightly down from 50% last year.

So that’s my wrap-up of Super Bowl 50 and all the ads and promotions that were associated with it. I hope you enjoyed my posts. We will now go through football withdrawal and dream that maybe our team will make it next year!

This Sunday the Carolina Panthers and the Denver Broncos will compete in Super Bowl 50 to be held in Santa Clara in Levi’s Stadium. I am eagerly awaiting the game which I’ll be watching from our living room couch. Check out this Panthers vs. Broncos Super Bowl trailer that the NFL recently posted.

The battle over this year’s Super Bowl ads has been heating up, in fact there was even a “Super Bowl’s Greatest Commercials” show that was broadcasted on CBS on Tuesday evening. CBS invited people to vote for their favorite, all-time Super Bowl ad. The winner was Budweiser with their ‘Clydesdales Brotherhood’ ad that aired in 2013 as the Ravens beat out the 49ers. The ad also included Stevie Nicks singing Landslide. So that helped to really strike an emotional chord with many of us viewers

Budweiser has already stated that they won’t be airing any puppy ads this year, which was last year’s favorite ad, but that the Clydesdales will definitely be back. The brand’s sister, Bud Light,  has been named as this year’s winner so far when it comes to digital chatter ever since they released a Super Bowl teaser ad featuring comedians Amy Schumer and Seth Rogan. The two are getting ready for their Bud Light Party, and just in time for the Iowa Caucuses,  “party” apparently is a play on political parties.

Budweiser gets serious in this ad which teams up with Helen Mirren to promote the  #GiveADamn movement against drunk driving. Mirren says  “People who still drive drunk are, simply put, a utterly useless, oxygen wasting, human form of pollution….so stop it”. She ends with taking a sip of her bottle of bud with her burger and fries.

Avocados From Mexico decided to advertise during the game for the first time last year and they’re back for a second year. “A lot of the stress around ‘Is the Super Bowl right for us?’ That’s gone,” said Jay Russell, chief creative officer of GSD&M, the ad agency behind both commercials for Avocados From Mexico. But, he added, “In a weird way, it’s more stressful because you have to come back.” The brand recently released this year’s ad which is called AVOS in Space and featured here.

eMarketer released some stats this week that shows that viewers still like Super Bowl ads. They stated that according to the National Retail Federation, last year, 77.1% of consumers surveyed considered Super Bowl ads a form of entertainment. A tiny portion, just 4.5%, said the ads bothered them. Even though people are generally not annoyed by these commercials that doesn’t mean they’re necessarily giving them 100% of their attention either. According to a PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2015 survey, 11.2% of respondents said they always use a mobile device while watching TV in general. And 23.7% said they sometimes do so.

Some of this time that people are spending on their phones during the Super Bowl will be spent engaging with social media which they often share comments about the game and the commercials.“The Super Bowl drives an incredible amount of social media commentary and interaction,” says eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson. “Advertisers want to be where their audience is, and that’s in social media. Last year, 65 million people worldwide used Facebook to talk about the game while it was happening, according to the company.”

So are you ready for some football? Between watching these two great teams, with two great quarterbacks, along with the Coldplay and guests halftime show, it should be pretty entertaining. Plus just announced today, Lady Gaga will help kick of the excitement by singing the national anthem. Oh and don’t forget about the ads.  I’ll be back next week with a recap to end my annual Super Bowl coverage.