Month: April 2019

A new promotion for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette kicked off last week that we are again assisting them with. Last year we helped them run several sweepstakes promotions to coincided with the launch of their NewsSlide app in order to encourage downloads. These were all instant win games in which they awarded a total of $45,500 in prizes. Their new promotion, Where Is NewsSlide Sweepstakes, is to continue the goal of increasing awareness and downloads of the app.

This promotion is a bit different than those that ran last year. They still have to first download the app, which is free. Instead of just filling out an entry form located within the app, participants need to search throughout it to find the photo that was partly pictured in that week’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ad. These will all be images of iconic places around Pittsburgh.

Once they find the photo, they will be taken to the Sweepstakes landing page in the app where they will need to answer a multiple-choice question to correctly identify the physical location of the photo. If the Entrant answers the question correctly, they will receive an entry into that week’s random drawing to determine the week’s winner. Entrants can play the game once per week during the Sweepstakes period which runs till June 9.

Each weekly winner will receive a $500 Amazon ecard for a total of $4,000 for 8 weeks. We’ve been working with PG’s agency, Garrison Hughes, who is also based in Pittsburgh and sends us the files of all the entrants each week so that we can do the weekly drawings.  The PG NewsSlide app contains new technology that attempts to take the daily newspaper audience beyond what is possible with the print edition by providing a deeper, more immersive relationship that includes text, video, animation, photographs and interactive elements including charts, graphs and maps. The platform runs on both iPhone and Android mobile devices including tablets and can be downloaded for free from the iTunes or Google Play Store.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette received just over 600 entries into the Sweepstakes during week one and one lucky winner has been notified. So we’ll see how many new downloads of the app this promotion generates for them.

The first round of the 2019 NBA Playoffs started on Saturday, April 14. Each team from both the Eastern and the Western Conference will play the best out of seven games in order to see who moves on to the semi-finals. Now I’m not a huge NBA fan, but I do know some things about basketball. The Denver Nuggets are one of the teams in the Western Conference that has made the playoffs and we are assisting one of our clients, Real World Marketing, with a sweepstakes for the Rocky Mountain Honda Dealers Association (RMHD) for their Denver Nuggets Signed Jersey Giveaway.

Here’s how this Giveaway works. Fans from Colorado can enter for a chance to win a signed jersey either on the RMHD’s Facebook page or their Instagram page. They then must find the post on either page that refers to the giveaway and comment on the post by answering the following two questions:

Question #1: How many games will this best of seven series with the Denver Nuggets go? Question #2: What will be the total score of the final game in this series? However, If the Denver Nuggets lose a game and are out of the playoffs at any time during the Sweepstakes Periods the two questions that the fans will then need to answer will change to include Denver Nuggets related trivia questions instead. Fans have to enter both questions correctly to be entered into the drawing.

The Denver Nuggets are matched up with the San Antonio Spurs for this first round. They played their first game on Saturday and lost to the Spurs 101-96. However they won their second game on Tuesday, 114 – 105 with quite the comeback. So the series is currently tied 1 – 1. The next game is scheduled for Thursday, April 18, in which the teams will travel to San Antonio.

Now this sweepstakes actually has three entry periods. The first entry period started on April 13 and ends on April 28 to cover Round 1. The next entry period runs May 2-12 to cover the semifinals and the last entry period runs May 14-26 covering the finals. So if the Nuggets stay in it the two questions will remain the same for each period. But if they lose and are out of the playoffs they change to Denver Nuggets trivia questions. Fans that enter both questions correctly during each entry period will receive an entry into the drawing for that entry period. At the end of each entry period a random drawing will be conducted to determine the winner of the jersey. A total of three signed jerseys will be awarded.

Last year we started working with RealWorld Marketing, an advertising and marketing agency firm that focuses solely on Acura and Honda. They currently work with over 20 Honda and Acura associations throughout the U.S. and provide marketing and advertising services exclusively to these association with the goal to help increase Acura and Honda sales. This promotion is a fun way for the RMHD to capitalize on their sponsorship of the Denver Nuggets.

So may be best teams make it to the next round! Enjoy the games and in the meantime I would like to wish everyone a very happy Easter weekend as well.

It has been Game of Thrones mania this past week with the final season premiering Sunday night, 4/14, on HBO. Many of the cast from the show have been appearing on the news and talk shows with even Kit Harrington hosting SNL last Saturday night and a few of his GOT co-stars, including Emilia Clark and Kit’s real-wife, Rose Leslie, who played Ygritte in the show, showing up in his opening monologue.  So I’m super synced for it to finally be here. Us fans have waited over 20 months to find out who will win the throne! I wish I could have been involved in some of the companies that have gotten on the GOT bandwagon, but unfortunately we have not. Here’s a few that have had success.

PepsiCo’s Mountain Dew is riding the GOT’s final-season wave with a sweepstakes promotion featuring a limited-run special-edition can called “A Can Has No Name”. This promotion ties into the Arya Stark character and what she endured from the Faceless Men of Braavos. The cans, when at room temperature, appear to be just be all white, brand less. But when chilled, the cans reveal the names from Arya’s “kill list,” along with the Mtn Dew and GOT logos.

Fans can try to win one of the cans by posting on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter about what they would sacrifice #ForTheThrone, using that hashtag plus #ACanHasNoName and #MTNDEWsweepstakes. 1,000 cans that come in a custom box will be awarded based on a computer-generated formula seeded throughout the Sweepstakes. If chosen as a winner they will receive a winning notification and perhaps a message from the Sponsor depending on what platform they used to enter.

In addition, residents of New York City and Los Angeles have been offered the opportunity to “find the Masters of Coin, state the ancient password, and receive a coin,” then follow instructions to locate Iron Vending Machines that dispense the no-name cans. Mtn Dew promoted the Sweepstakes with this GOT-themed short video and posted it across Mtn Dew’s social channels.

Oreo is another brand who got very creative with a GOT tie-in and has created four limited-edition cookies — three embossed with the sigils (coat of arms images) of the Lannister, Targaryen and Stark houses, respectively, and one embossed with the face of the White Walker Night King. They then recreated the GOT opening all with these GOT Oreo cookies.  Check out the video here.

Lastly, Bud Light released another GOT TV spot with the Mountain that aired during last weekend’s NCAA tournament.

We know what so many of us will be doing Sunday night. Enjoy! #ForTheThrone

A new animated adventure film is coming to theaters starting next week, April 12, called the Missing Link. It is written and directed by Chris Butler and produced by Laika and features the voices of Hugh Jackman, Zoe Saldana, Emma Thompson, Stephen Fry, David Walliams, Timothy Olyphant, Matt Lucas, Amrita Acharia, and Zach Galifianakis. The film follows the story of  Mr Link, who is 8 feet tall and covered in fur,  is tired of living a solitary life in the Pacific Northwest. He recruits fearless explorer Sir Lionel Frost to guide him on a journey to find his long-lost relatives in the fabled valley of Shangri-La.

Our client, Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt, has partnered with the production company, Laika Studios, to help celebrate the film. The Menchie’s and Missing Link Adventure Sweepstakes kicked off on April 1 and will run till the end of the month. From now up till April 30 Menchie’s customers will automatically receive one entry into the Sweepstakes when they use their registered Menchie’s loyalty card at any Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt store. Those that don’t have a card are invited to stop into any location and register for their My Smileage club card. Participants can also enter online at the Menchie’s website at www.menchies.com/MissingLinkAdventureSweepstakes.

One lucky Grand Prize winner will win a trip to the Grand Canyon for up to four people. The trip package includes up to four round trip airline tickets and hotel accommodations that includes three standard room nights at the Grand Canyon Railway & Hotel located in Williams, AZ and two standard room nights at the Maswik Lodge North located in the Grand Canyon National Park. Also included are up to four tickets to the train experience which travels daily from the Grand Canyon Railway & Hotel to the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park. A check for $250 will also be sent to the Grand Prize Winner to help cover any additional expenses. The total value of the Grand Prize is $4,750.

Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt is an award winning franchise which currently has more than 540 locations around the world including the U.S.A., Canada, Puerto Rico, England and more. They are promoting this sweepstakes within Menchie’s locations located in the U.S. with posters and other point-of-sale and on their social media sites as well. We set up the Sweepstakes entry page for Menchie’s and again are using the Shortstack Application to build the entry form and collect all the entrant’s data. We then gave Menchie’s the code so that they could embed the entry form on a page on their website.   All of Shortstack’s entry pages are mobile friendly and last year they added an easy way to include CSS coding which is great for those of us that don’t have much programming experience. If you would like more details on how to set up a promotion utilizing the Shortstack platform, please feel free to contact me. It’s a great tool and it also includes a great team of support people.

So now that’s it’s officially Springtime, it’s time to get out and enjoy some Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt! You can also download their new app and get $5.00 in Menchie’s money.