Author: Donna DeClemente

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.

We got to see some great football last Sunday and watch two teams move on to Super Bowl 50. Payton Manning of the Denver Broncos vs. Tom Brady of the New England Patriots played the first game. However, the Patriots offense just didn’t really show up and Brady was sacked over 20 times. The final score was close, but the Broncos defense really dominated the game and ended up with the “W”. Today it was announced that the Patriots fired their offensive line coach, Dave DeGuglielmo. It was also leaked today that Payton Manning at the end of the game hinted to Bill Belichick, Patriots’ head coach,  that he may be retiring.

The next game with Cam Newton and the Panthers really wasn’t much of a game. They defeated the Arizona Cardinals 49-15. So now we have the older, more experienced quarterback, Payton Manning, to play against the young and unstoppable quarterback, Cam Newton, in Super Bowl 50. Let’s hope it’s a good game since the hype is already in full swing.

This year, CBS is charging as much as $5 million for a 30 second Super Bowl ad. Last year, NBC celebrated when approximately 114.4 million people tuned into the 2015 Super Bowl to watch the Seattle Seahawks play the Patriots, making the game the most-watched broadcast in the history of U.S. television. So those that shelled out $4.5 million for a 30 second spot had a win as well. Plus, Katy Perry and her dancing costumed sharks pulled in 118.5 million viewers making it the most watched halftime show in the Super Bowl’s 49 year history.

So what will we see with this year’s ads?  Budweiser, one of the game’s main sponsors, already stated that they won’t be back this year with another adorable puppy ad. Last year’s Lost Puppy ad was voted the most favorite of all the spots. Animal lovers need not despair, however, because the beautiful Budweiser Clydesdales will still grace our screens on Super Bowl Sunday. According to Jorn Socquet, U.S. VP of Marketing for Anheuser-Busch, “the Clydesdales are icons of the brand and will most certainly make an appearance.” The puppy ads just don’t sell beer!

Bud Light will be airing a spot featuring Amy Schumer and Seth Rogen who will appear as Bud Light bottle buddies. We’ll be seeing many other famous actors and other stars such as comedic actor T.J. Miller who will star in an ad for Shock Top beer–a spot which he’s recently teased to be the “greatest Super Bowl commercial of all time.” Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler will be “walking this way” for Skittles and website creator Squarespace has hired comic duo Key and Peele. Liam Neeson will be supporting LG Electronics while Christopher Walken will be backing up KIA.

My hometown, Rochester native and soccer star Abby Wambach is expected to make a big splash with her appearance in a new BMW, Mini Cooper ad. The commercial, “Defy Labels,” will launch a six-month long campaign and is meant to help the public look past the “small” and “cute” labels with which the Mini is usually associated. Tennis star Serena Williams and professional skateboarder and actor Tony Hawk will also be featured in two other “Defy Labels” spots. Here’s a look at Abby’s teaser ad:

Super Bowl 50’s half-time show is also expected to be a big hit. Some halftime performers who have performed on the stage of the game previously, Beyoncé and Bruno Mars, are both expected to join Coldplay for the halftime show. “Are you kidding me? It’s the greatest moment of our band’s life. We’re going to give it everything we have,” Coldplay frontman Chris Martin promised in a video interview promoting the show.

So stayed tuned next week for some additional coverage of Super Bowl 50 Advertising and Promotions!

Last weekend the road to SuperBowl 50 continued with four great playoff games that left us with four teams in the running. All four where the home teams, unlike the weekend before that made history when all four away teams won.

The Green Bay Packers almost got away with an upset when Aaron Rodgers had two Hail Mary’s as the 4th quarter expired to tie the game and send it to overtime. However, the Cardinals got the ball first, even over a coin flip controversy, and ran the ball down the field to score a touchdown and end the game.

So now we have the New England Patriots heading to Denver to  play the Bronco’s, the AFC’s #1 seed. This is the game of the quarterbacks with Brady vs. Manning, and many speculating could be the last time they will ever face each other again. On the NFC side we have the Arizona Cardinals heading to Carolina to play the Panthers, the almost undefeated team on the season (16-1). I’m looking forward to watching some good football this Sunday.

Besides the Dorito’s Crash the Super Bowl Contest, the parent company, PepsiCo, is also returning with its Game Day Grub Match for Super Bowl 50. This contest challenges student chefs to cook up the greatest dish for the “Greatest Day In Football”. This unique cooking competition features students from The Culinary Institute of America, right here in New York state, competing to create the ultimate football food. Part of the requirements is that each dish must incorporate PepsiCo food and beverage products as ingredients.

In addition to the student competition, PepsiCo is giving the general public their chance to share their best dish. This contest just started accepting submissions on January 14 and will continue till game day, February 7. Everyone is invited to submit their own game day dish to Instagram, Twitter of Pinterest using the hashtag #gamedaygrubentry. They need to upload an image of their dish along with a copy description or a link to the recipe. A panel of judges will review all the eligible submission and choose winners based on the following criteria: Presentation of dish, Use of at least 2 PepsiCo products in recipe and Creative use of product.

The Grand Prize winner will receive $1,500 plus a PepsiCo party pack that includes a mix of PepsiCo food and beverage products, as well as a signed cookbook from Anne Burrell, and a Wilson Super Bowl 50 Football. Two Runner-up prizes with each receive $500 as well as a PepsiCo party pack the signed cookbook and a Wilson Super Bowl 50 Football.

PepsiCo’s main objective with this promotion is to increase awareness of their entire food and beverage portfolio that includes includes 22 brands such as Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Pepsi-Cola, Quaker and Tropicana. A list of all their products in featured here on the contest website.

“Great food and football are captivating millions of fans gearing up for Super Bowl 50 — and Game Day Grub Match brings these two things together in a way only PepsiCo can,” said PepsiCo Executive Chef Jody Denton. “Our snacks and beverages have been staples of Super Bowl parties for five decades, and the student chefs from the Culinary Institute of America took game day food to a whole new level.”

Back to the student’s competition, it came down to three teams and after much deliberation among the judges, Claire, Yejin and Joel were selected as the Game Day Grub Match champions for their Doritos Dim Sum Joh. Each of them earned a trip to the San Francisco Bay Area, tickets to Super Bowl 50 and a $5,000 scholarship. Congrats to all these amazing young chefs.

You can visit the Game Day Grub Match website to see the student recipes that were submitted to help inspire you to create you own game day dish for Super Bowl 50. There are also many photos and recipes on the site that have already been submitted by the general public. The image above is one of the first submissions. They make you hungry just looking at them all.

We had a bit of NFL history in last weekend’s wild-card round. For the first time all four road teams won in the same playoff weekend. All those hometown fans in  Washington D.C., Minneapolis, Cincinnati and Houston were disappointed to see their team’s season end. The fans of the Cincinnati Bengals and the  Minnesota Vikings thought they had the game in the bag, but fans of both teams had a heartbreaking loss and Vikings fans sat through a bitter cold, minus degrees, game.

So this weekend the Road to Super Bowl 50 continues with 8 teams moving on. Saturday we have the Chiefs at the Patriots first and then the Packers at the Cardinals. On Sunday we get to watch the Seahawks at the Panthers and then the Steelers at the Broncos. So I highly doubt we’ll see a repeat of all road teams winning in the same weekend.

PepsiCo, the parent company of Doritos, is back again for their Annual Crash the Super Bowl Video Contest which is their 10th season. They announced that this will be the last edition of the contest and now my last time writing about it on this blog which I’ve done since 2008.

This year just three finalists videos were chosen which are now posted on the contest website.  The public is invited to vote once per day, per device up till Jan. 28.

This year’s contestants have the chance to win $1 million and the opportunity to work with Zack Snyder, director of 300 and Man of Steel, whose latest film, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, will be released next March. The winner will work with Snyder as well as Warner Brothers and DC Comics on an undisclosed future project.

“We’re giving consumers one last shot to make their mark and see their homemade ads air during the Super Bowl broadcast,” Jeff Klein, vice president of marketing at Frito-Lay, said in a statement. “This is truly last call for all of those who not only want a shot at $1 million—but want a chance to jump-start their career in Hollywood.” The winning ad will air during CBS’ Super Bowl 50 telecast on Feb. 7. One Grand Prize winner and the two First Prize winners will all receive a trip to attend Super Bowl 50 and view the game from the Doritos suite.

May the best ad win. I’m always a sucker for any video with dogs. Here on the contest website you can view all the fan ads that have won and aired during the Super Bowl.

I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays and Happy New Year. Now that we are into January, as my blogging tradition conditions, I’m going to focus on the football playoff season and the Super Bowl. I will be covering some of the ads and promotional campaigns associated with Super Bowl 50. This year Super Bowl 50 will be hosted on February 7, in the City of Santa Clara at the state-of-the-art Levi’s Stadium, which the bay area hosts claim is the greenest and most technologically advanced professional football stadium in the United States.

Here’s what this year’s playoff picture looks like this year:

If you have been a reader of this blog, you would know that I’m a Buffalo Bills fan and writing about another playoff season that they didn’t make. It was the first year with Rex Ryan as the coach, who promised that we’d make it and then had to eat his words. But on the bright side, it appears we have found a quarterback in Tyrod Taylor and he and Sammy Watkins really connected in the last game of the season in which they ended the Jets playoff hopes.

The Super Bowl has been one of the most watched sporting events and continues to have an enormous amount of marketing associated with it. NBC’s broadcast of last year’s Super Bowl was the most watched program in American television history, surpassing the previous year’s game. So we’ll see if we break that record again.

Last year most of the advertisers followed the trend of the previous year and released their TV spots prior to the actual broadcast of the game. So we expect to see more of that this year. For now here are a few of promotions that are currently still offering a chance to win ticket packages to the game.

SiriusXM’s Super Bowl 50 Sweepstakes is giving their current subscribers a chance to win an opportunity to go to Super Bowl 50. One Grand prize winner will receive round-trip airfare for two to San Francisco, CA, three nights hotel stay and two tickets to Super Bowl 50. This sweepstakes ends on January 25.

Campbell’s Chunky Super Bowl 50 Instant Win Game is giving away ten Grand Prizes that include a 3 night trip for each winner and guest to Super Bowl 50, round trip air transportation, hotel accommodations, a travel stipend for ground transportation, 2 tickets to the game, 2 Super Bowl 50 Gift Bags and $250 spending money. Participants are invited to purchase specialty-marked cans of Campbell’s Chunky soups and look under the lid to see if they are a winner. A no purchase entry is also included on the promotional website.

We are assisting a client with The Shocase Special Teams Sweepstakes which is offering participants a chance to win 2 tickets to Super Bowl 50 along with hotel accommodations.  We again are using the Shortstack platform to host the promotional entry form. Shocase’s objective is to create awareness of their professional network for marketers and gain new members.

So what teams will make it to this year’s Super Bowl? Will we see the return of the New England Patriots, or will it be the Denver Broncos who will battle it out with Cam Newton and the Carolina Panthers? Or will one of the wild card teams, such as Seattle or Pittsburgh,  continue their recent hot streaks and win a division title. We’ll know more after this weekend. Stay tuned for more coverage as the road to the Super Bowl continues.

New Year’s Eve is tomorrow. I hope 2015 was good to you and that you’ve been enjoying this holiday season. My end-of-the-year tradition is to write my last post as a review of what I’ve written during the past year. So here’s a look back at some of the top posts from this blog that I felt reflected either a major shift in the promotional marketing industry, a new trend or a personal or business highlight. I have written 49 blog posts this past year, including this one, almost one a week which I published mostly on Wednesdays.

Pepsi Hyped for Halftime Contest Comes to Rochester
Our hometown, Rochester, NY, was 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 the 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.

Sweepstakes invites us to text WARM to Kiss the Cold Goodbye Kiss the Cold Good-Bye Already!
The month of February brought sub-zero temperatures across the U.S. along with snow. Those of us in New York and New England saw the the worst of it with Boston breaking historical records. Experience Kissimmee’s “Kiss the Cold Good-bye” Sweepstakes was perfect timing targeting Boston and New York for chances to win a sunny Florida getaway.

Welcome to spring and March Madness. Have you filled out your bracket yet?
I got caught up with this three-week event this year and was one of the many fans placing their bets and filling out brackets. My daily read, #theSkimm, gave me a pretty good overview of the tournament and invited me to join the #SkimMadness bracket, which is actually part of the Yahoo Sports Tourney Pick’em brackets promotion. Our client, Menchie’s Frozen Yogurt, teamed up with Hershey’s, to run the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Slam Dunk Sweepstakes which offered a chance to win tickets to the 2016 Final Four games in Houston, TX.

New updates to Facebook’s Messenger App unveiled at last week’s F8 Conference
Facebook hosted their annual 2-day conference for developers known as F8. I have never attended but was able to this year online via a live streaming invite. Messenger was a big focus of the event in which Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told attendees “By opening up Messenger as a platform, we’re going to help people express themselves in new ways”.  During 2015 messaging apps have grown into their own social networks and are predicted to be even bigger in 2016.

Headed down to Nashville to speak at the annual Blog Paws Social Media Conference
My first visit to Nashville, TN,  was to attend this very unique social media conference. This was my fifth time attending and my forth time speaking. My session this year was titled “Key Legal Developments Affecting Sweepstakes, Contests, Disclosure & Digital/Social Media” which addressed a broad array of legal regulations and guidelines. What makes this event so unique is the 100 plus pets that were in attendance. You can see some of my pet photos here along with a recap of keynote session by Peter Shankman.

Here’s a summary of the various social media promotion guidelines
Part of what I presented in my session at the BlogPaws Conference covered a broad array of the guidelines for promotions from the various social media platforms. It is hard to keep up with these and they do change regularly, but I believe these still stand. We’ll have to see what changes are in store for 2016.

New photo contest from MSC Cruises adds to the summer promotions
This MSC Cruises contest was one of the many summer promotions that we worked on. However, while I was on a brief summer vacation in Myrtle Beach visiting family, there was much happening in the news and on social media. The Supreme Court came out with their final rulings which they legalized gay marriage in all 50 states and #SCOTUS was everywhere! According to Facebook 26 million users changed their Facebook profile photo to show a rainbow flag to celebrate the historic decision and many brands also got in on the big moment with social media posts in support of the ruling.

Rio Grande Valley Hyundai dealers invite Texans to take a selfie with a new Hyundai
2015 was the year that the word “Selfie” and the art of taking a photo of yourself really exploded all over the world and across every generation. More and more companies are asking people to take a “selfie” and post it to their social media accounts in order to enter a sweepstakes or contest for a chance to win. This post is about one of these types of sweepstakes we were involved with.

What types of user data are being collected the most from sweepstakes & contests
This was one of my most read and shared posts of the year. The team at Shortstack published these findings from the many sweepstakes and contests that have been created utilizing their application regarding the types of data that is collected. We utilize their application when we create a promotional micro-site or a Facebook tab page for our clients. I found their findings interesting and pretty much in line with the data collection we recommend.

YSC We Can Survive Concert Sweepstakes
In honor of my mom and National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, I write at least one blog post a year about a promotion supporting the cause. This year we worked with the YSC, Young Survival Coalition, a national organization that supports young women facing breast cancer. They launched the YSC “We Can Survive Concert” Sweepstakes that awarded a trip to attend the “We Can Survive” concert which took place in the Hollywood Bowl on October 24.

Sweepstakes, Contests, Social Media, Real-Time Marketing, FTC, all focus at BAA’s 37th Marketing Law Conference
I again was invited to attend the BAA’s 37th Annual Marketing Law Conference which wrapped up on Nov 11th in Chicago. This year it was titled “Walking the Line: Between Innovation and Regulation”. There were two prominent themes: Real-Time Marketing and the FTC’s Endorsement &Testimonial Guidelines. To quote one speaker, Ron Urbach,  “Today we need Live Lawyering, along with training and best practices to provide the right info at the right time in the right way.”

Honda is first to use Twitter’s new Instant Win feature for their holiday promo
Each December I write about holiday promotions, many that we work on. However, I included this one that we were not involved in because it really caught my attention. Honda ‘s “Happy Honda Days” end-of-year marketing campaign used Twitter’s new Instant Win feature. The Honda “Open The Cheer” Instant Win Game and Sweepstakes offered instant win prizes for retweets, which were Amazon gift cards and Apple Watches, with a grand prize drawing for a 2016 Honda Accord.

I hope you enjoyed the review. Thanks again for reading! I wish you a very Happy New Year and here’s to a wonderful, healthy and prosperous 2016!

We’re helping our friends over at Experience Kissimmee run another holiday promotion right now. Their “Snowy Holiday” Sweepstakes is bringing a winter wonderland to Florida. Funny, because we have no signs of snow here in the northeastern part of the country and it looks like we won’t be having a white Christmas.

From now till December 27 participates are invited to enter the sweepstakes by either visiting the promotional website, www.snowyholiday.com, and filling out an entry form, or just by texting the keyword “SNOW” to the shortcode 313131 to gain an entry. People can enter once per day for a chance to be a weekly winner of tickets for different holiday activities in Kissimmee.

For example, this week’s prize package include two tickets to Universal Studios or Universal’s Islands of Adventure at Universal Orlando Resort. Plus two tickets to Now Snowing in Celebration, Florida that includes a train ride, horse and carriage ride, ice skating and a photo with Santa. Experience Kissimmee is mainly targeting residents of Florida to come visit at this time of year, so that is why the prize package does not include any airfare or hotels.

This is one of many sweepstakes that Experience Kissimmee has been running that combines online entry with mobile text messaging entry which they have had great success with. Just wait till January and we’ll most likely see a new. similar promotion but instead targeting those of us in the northeast!
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