Here is western New York we’re tired of the winter and the gray days. Many of us would love to get away to a warmer climate so it’s a great time to run a promotion offering a prize that does just that. Here are two sweepstakes we’re administering that are offering a chance to win a getaway.
The first is from the tourism folks for Nassau Paradise Island who have teamed up with Cubbies swimsuits to offer this getaway. We have been working with their agency, Verb Interactive, who specializes in the travel industry. Today actually is the last day that you can enter the “Build Your Bahamas Weekend Getaway with Chubbies and Nassau Paradise Island” Sweepstakes. The prize consists of a three-night stay for two at Warwick Paradise Island Bahamas, All Inclusive, round trip air transportation and a pair of swimsuits from Chubbies. To enter people just have to submit their name and contact information on the entry form for a chance to win this weekend trip for two in Nassau Paradise Island.
Cubbies is launching a new collection inspired by Nassau Paradise Island and they created this video to promote their swimsuits and the new resort. Looks pretty nice!
The other sweepstakes is Joffery’s Coffee To Castle Sweepstakes which runs till March 18. We’ve been running these sweepstakes for Joffery’s for the past four years. They again are offering a chance to win a Walt Disney World® vacation. To enter people just have to submit their name and contact information on the entry form for a chance to win this trip.
Joffrey’s is the Official Specialty Coffee of Walt Disney World® Resort, Disneyland® Resort and Disney Vacation Club. This trip includes a 5-day/4-night grand prize vacation package to the Walt Disney World® Resort including hotel, airfare, theme park tickets, plus a $50 Joffrey’s Beverage Card to use for coffee and treats at Joffrey’s kiosks throughout the Walt Disney World® Resort!
I’ll be heading to warmer climate for a vacation back to Mexico in two weeks. Looking forward to it!
The daily morning Hungry Girl newsletter has been coming to my inbox for several years now. I’ve been a fan of Hungry girl and have shared their site with many and have even purchased some of the Hungry Girl cookbooks. HungryGirl.com was first started in 2004 by Lisa Lillien, who now has over a million subscribers to her free daily email subscription in which she sends out recipes, advice and much more. Rather than give up some of the food that she enjoyed, Lisa realized she could remake such food into more healthy options which she shares with her readers. She also started the Hungry Girl Cruise in which the first one was so successful, she’s hosting another one this April.
The Hungry Girl Cruise includes a 7-night itinerary aboard Holland America’s ms Nieuw Amsterdam. It starts in Ft. Lauderdale and stops at Half Moon Bay in the Bahamas, George Town Cayman Islands, Cozumel Mexico, and Key West Florida. The cruise includes many Hungry Girl onboard events such as cooking demos, presentations and panel discussions, parties and get-together’s, workouts and deck walking and of course Hungry Girl dinner entries from Hungry Girl recipes. Lisa will be on board leading most of these events and interacting with all the guests.
It was a pleasant surprise when we were contacted by the Brandon Agency though our sister company, Alliance Sweepstakes, who requested help with a sweepstakes for one of their clients, Green Giant. I was glad to assist them with the sweepstakes administration for the “All Aboard! Join Green Giant on the Hungry Girl Cruise” Sweepstakes. Participants just need to visit the promotional website and fill out and submit the entry form for a chance to win. The sweepstakes just recently started and runs just till February 28. So I’ll be doing the drawing soon for one lucky winner who will receive accommodations, all the events and on board meals on the Hungry Girl Cruise for them and their guest along with round-trip airfare for two from the winners home to Ft. Lauderdale.
The Brandon Agency stated that they hope to run more sweepstakes for Green Giant this year, so I will report on those as they are launched.
In the meantime, since I did write this post last week about the Winter Olympics, I just wanted to say that I’ve been following the competitions since the games started. I was so glad to watch Lindsay Von last night get the bronze medal in the women’s alpine skiing downhill event. It appeared that she was going to take the silver medal until one of the later skiers from Norway beat her time. This is most likely her last Olympic downhill event but she does have one more event. Tonight we can watch her take on U.S. teammate Mikaela Shiffrin in the Alpine combined, which adds the times of a downhill and one run of slalom. I’ll be watching this as well!
Football is now done for awhile, so have you been watching the Winter Olympic Games taking place in PyeongChang, South Korea? Last night I watched the men’s halfpipe competition and saw Shawn White reclaim his title by winning the gold medal. He is now a three-time Olympic champion and he has won the United States 100th gold medal at the Winter Olympics.
And how about Chloe Kim, the 17 year old snowboarder from the U.S. who couldn’t play in the Sochi Games because she was too young. She landed her first gold medal in the women’s halfpipe competition the day before in which she dominated the event and ended up with an almost near perfect 98.75 score on her last run. I found myself being so enthused by both these young athletes.
Nabisco is one of the sponsor this year who recently signed a multi-year Team USA official cookie and cracker sponsorship, starting with these 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Game. They were smart enough to grab Chloe Kim, a “2018 Team USA Hopeful Snowboarding” to be included in some of their marketing. Nabisco’s theme for its 2018 Olympics campaign is “Can’t Miss Moments.” “Just like the Games, our brands bring people together — from teammates to roommates, fans to families — to share a moment, big or small,” says Stephen Chriss, head of North American marketing activation and partnerships at Mondelez, Nabisco’s parent company.
The campaign is focused on three of Nabisco’s brands, Oreo, Ritz and Chips Ahoy! It includes TV, digital and social media, a sweepstakes, themed packaging and in-store recipe sampling. The #BitetoWinSweepstakes launched on Jan. 1 and runs till Feb. 25. It offers chances to win a $10,000 “entertainment package” as well as other prizes to be awarded daily during the Games. To enter, participants are invited to “Show us Your Bite” by submitting a photo of a an Oreo cookie, a Chips Ahoy! cookie or a Ritz cracker with a bite taken out of it. This ties into the Olympians’ custom of biting their medals during the award ceremonies. Nabisco has also provided a photo participants can print out and then take a photo of themselves with this photo in order to comply with the no purchase necessary rule.
Photos can be posted on either Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #BitetoWinSweepstakes. They can also be posted on Facebook either on the Oreo page, Ritz Crackers page or the Chips Ahoy page by locating the sweepstakes post and then commenting on the post with their photo and the hashtag. Or they can visit the sweepstakes microsite at www.bitetowinsweepstakes and fill out the fields and submit the entry form with their photo. Besides the grand prize there will be daily drawings that will award 17 silver prizes which consists of a silver gear back that includes a camera, Nabisco products and a $25 gift card, as well as 1,700 bronze prizes, a Nabisco-Team USA tote filled with assorted merchandise and Nabisco products. Total value of all prizes comes to $104,350.
Accompanying Chloe Kim on the marketing materials is two-time Olympic gold medalist alpine skier Ted Ligety. Some of the alpine skiing events have been rescheduled because of the weather and high winds. So we have to wait and see when Ted Ligety will get his chance for another medal.
So as you must of heard by now, the Philadelphia Eagles beat the New England Patriots 41-33 to win the Super Bowl for the first time ever! The Eagles were the underdogs and most bets were on the Patriots winning another Super Bowl! The Eagles got on the board first and manged to stay ahead for almost the whole game. Eagles back-up quarterback Nick Foles, who had been considering retiring from the NFL, caught a pass in the end zone to score a touchdown and proved he’s this year’s MVP. The Patriots almost made a comeback, but QB Tom Brady’s last-second hail mary didn’t work out.
The Pepsi Super Bowl LII Halftime Show featured Justin Timberlake who marked his record-setting third time playing the Super Bowl, following appearances at Super Bowls XXXV and XXXVII. The latter performance, in 2004, was the infamous Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction. Timberlake performed some of his big hits including “Suit & Tie,” “Rock Your Body,” “SexyBack” and his new song, “Filthy. Since the show was in Minneapolis this year, Timberlake also sang Prince’s “I Would Die 4 U” in front of a projection of Prince as the stadium was covered in purple lighting in a touching tribute.
Now what about this year’s ads? Again, a majority of the ads and their teasers were posted online before the game. Some of the initial reactions of ads ended up differently once the game was over.
NBC who televised the game took the opportunity to promote the Winter Olympics with opening ceremonies in Pyeongchang, South Korea this Friday. Their spots, starring Mikaela Shiffrin, Lindsey Vonn, and Chloe Kim all tested high by MediaPost.com on a scale of emotional measurement, and all three scored higher than any other ad at this year’s game. This year audiences seem to respond best to inspirational ads, and stories of real athletic achievement to a sports audience made them good. Toyota also top-scored with its “Good Odds” ad, about the life of Paralympian skier Lauren Woolstonecraft. All four of these top-scoring ads stared winter sports athletes focused on women.
The NFL also had a win with the Eli Manning and Odell Beckham Jr. Dirty Dancing spoof ad, creating their own take on touchdown celebration. While Payton Manning starred as the “Vacation Quarterback” helping kids plan their visit to Universal Resorts. Both ads included humor and the right mix of featuring celebrities while keeping it fun and simple. M&M’s silly ad starring Danny DeVito as the human M&M, and Amazon’s 90-second ad with several celebrities standing in for their Alexa voice assistant also were winners using celebrities. The Amazon ad was a favorite with many, but it tested a little lower than the others quite possibly because it was a little long.
The ads that portrayed a “Brand Purpose” also scored very high. These were led by Budweiser, who is typically known for it’s Midwestern, Clydesdale imagery. Instead they ran with the “Stand By You” ad which focused on their disaster relief efforts. It showed real employees at a Georgia-based brewery which stopped making beer to deliver canned clean water to disaster areas, Florida, Puerto Rico, Houston and California.
Anther inspirational ads included one from Toyota which is part of their mobility campaign that featured no cars. It centered on the story of Lauren Woolstencroft, a Paralympian born with no legs below the knee and no left arm below the elbow. Their other ad, “One Team” featured a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim and a Buddhist monk getting into a Toyota Tundra together. They all just want to get to the game on time and are united by their love of football. Mass Mutual’s “Unsung” ad, set to “I’ll Stand By You,” showcased various inspirational acts of kindness by people including, “Synagogue welcomes Muslims after mosque attacked” and “Woman invites homeless man to live with her family.”
Tide did something very clever this year with a take-over campaign that had not been done before. Many of the first reviews I read loved it, especially those of us in the marketing and advertising industry, the people who make and care about the commercials who thought it was the winner of the super ads. However, it didn’t score very well with the average viewer. Some of the Tide ads scored okay, but others ended up being confusing or annoying to the less committed watchers.
The other loser of the night went to Ram Trucks “Built To Serve” ad, which used the voice of Martin Luther King. It immediately got a lot of negative response on Twitter from those saying it was not an appropriate use to sell trucks. Besides the controversy, the low score it received was mostly based on the fact that the ad was overall kinda boring.
The year’s Super Bowl advertising overall was not a winner. With ads costing $5 million or more to run, plus their high production costs, you expect them to be a big deal. This is because the audience is much bigger than anything else American TV offers. But when MediaPost compared these ad scores to scores for all the ads in their U.S. database, the Super Bowl LII ads performed slightly worse than average.
At least we had a few that did perform really well. And the game itself was a winner. That’s my wrap-up of Super Bowl LII. I hope you enjoyed my posts. We now have the Winter Olympic Games to look forward to as we go through football withdrawal.
Here is western New York we’re tired of the winter and the gray days. Many of us would love to get away to a warmer climate so it’s a great time to run a promotion offering a prize that does just that. Here are two sweepstakes we’re administering that are offering a chance to win a getaway.
The other sweepstakes is Joffery’s Coffee To Castle Sweepstakes which runs till March 18. We’ve been running these sweepstakes for Joffery’s for the past four years. They again are offering a chance to win a Walt Disney World® vacation. To enter people just have to submit their name and contact information on the entry form for a chance to win this trip.
