Like a driver depending on his pit crew, Warner Bros. knew it needed the help of key partners to take its tie-in with NASCAR’s Monte Carlo 400 Winston Cup race to the next level.

Originally developed in 2001 from a long-standing licensing agreement between Chevrolet and the Looney Tunes character Taz, the Monte Carlo event featured Tunes characters teamed with Chevy racecar drivers, such as Jeff Gordon partnered with Bugs Bunny. The number of Looney Tunes teams expanded from nine in 2001 to 12 for the Sept. 7, 2002 race at Richmond International Speedway.

Race car driver Jeff Gordon and Bugs

As with any successful live promotion, the key was generating big buzz in the weeks and months prior to the actual event, and Warner Bros. leveraged not only the assets of the AOL Time Warner empire but partners ranging from Chevy to NASCAR to Lowe’s Home Improvement. “This was a blessing and a curse,” says Dave Hedrick, VP-promotional marketing and branded foods at Warner Bros. “Having so many partners was a real challenge to coordinate, but also helped us do things we couldn’t have done on our own.”

Sister company AOL ran a sweepstakes dubbed Pick the Winner, Pocket the Car. From July 23 through Sept. 2, AOL members could vote for which one of the Winston Cup Looney Tunes racecars would finish first among the group. The grand prize was a new Chevy Monte Carlo SS presented by Jeff Green, driver of the AOL-sponsored car (and ultimately the winner among the Looney Tunes group). More than 125,000 consumers entered through AOL and chevy.com.

Chevy drummed up buzz with regional test-drive incentives and advertising. The Chevy Motorsports and Thunder Tour also gave fans a peek at the Looney Tunes cars. “It was a classic cross-promotion, taking the strengths and assets of each partner,” says Terry Dolan, marketing manager for Chevy racing.

Warner Bros. took over race weekend, expanding Looney Tunes team participation to the Busch Series race on Sept. 6. Race attendees could swing by the Taz Atti-Tour, a Looney Tunes Extreme Sports event series that featured professional BMX, in-line skating and skateboarding demonstrations. Atti-Tour sponsors such as Bravo Foods, ConAgra, and Infogames conducted onsite sampling.

Warner Bros. hosted the Spills and Chills Golf Cart Race Press, which featured Looney Tunes teams running a wacky race.

Auction service iQVC conducted a live, two-hour For Race Fans only broadcast from the racetrack, selling Monte Carlo 400 Looney Tunes wearables and car diecasts.

On race day, Team Monte Carlo drivers and their Looney Tunes teammates took a parade lap to start the race.

The promotion generated $50 million in retail sales and generated more than 500 million consumer impressions and $10.3 million in media value. This fall, Warner Bros. Consumer Products, Action Performance and Chevrolet will team up for the third consecutive year on a Looney Tunes-themed NASCAR promotion to boost awareness for the upcoming live-action Looney Tunes feature film.

SUPPORTING CAST

WARNER BROS: Dave Hedrick, Kieran O’Dowd
CHEVY: Terry Dolan

SEARCH ENGINES are still the favorite way for consumers to find products on the Web. More than ever, it’s important to be savvy about how search engines work- especially because they’re always changing how they rank sites.

Search-engine listings (unlike directories, which are made by humans) are compiled by “crawlers” or “spiders” that traverse the Web, taking note of the sites they find and then indexing them. When a consumer types in keywords for a search-say, “jellybeans”-the search engine uses various criteria to rank the results. Everyone has the same goal: to be ranked as close to the top as possible.

Many Web agencies offer services for developing marketers’ search engine strategies. Boston-based Berenson, Isham & Partners charges from $2,000 to $10,000 “to do each site by hand and really explore each search engine and identify the best place for you to be,” says vice president for interactive marketing Harry Gold. “We have a list of about 300 search engines, but 275 of them a) don’t matter and b) are subject-related and won’t accept your link.” There are, however, some business-to-business sites, like Business Seek (www.businesseek.com) and Small Business Focus (www.sbfocus.com) that might be worth checking out.

Different search engines use different ranking formulas, but in general the most important factors are location and frequency. Search engines are top-down affairs-the higher the words are on your Web page, the more likely the page will win the contest. The most important text is the title of the Web page. It should contain keywords; for example, not just “Acme Corp.” but “Acme Corp.-Jellybeans.”

The other important element is the frequency of the word on the page. The more often it appears, the more likely your site will be picked up. Some designers slather the keyword all over to increase the page’s chances. Search engines are catching on to this; it is considered the netiquette equivalent of spam, or the dreaded unsolicited commercial e-mail. Some search engines will penalize offenders or even banish them from their listings.

Another important thing to remember about search engines is that they ignore pages generated dynamically from a database of products (i.e., if a Web surfer wants “men’s clothes” the site pulls together all the men’s apparel from its product database).

One solution to this problem and several others (such as the fact that most search engines don’t read pages with frames) is to use so-called meta tags, which are embedded in code but not seen by the Web surfer. Meta tags make up for the lack of text at a Web site. The two most important types are keyword tags and description tags.

Keyword meta tags list keywords that may not appear on the page. Description meta tags are used if for some reason (and there are few good ones) the top of a Web page does not describe what it’s all about; a description can be written in the meta tag. This will be picked up by the search engine, so in the search results the site will be ranked higher. For example, a meta tag can be written so the “Acme Corp.” site comes up as “Acme Corp.-the best damn jellybeans in the land.”

(A word of caution: Not all search engines are able to read meta tags.)

Sound like a lot to keep up with? It is. Lynn J. Branigan, managing partner of Multimedia Resources LLC in Larchmont, NY, suggests that companies assign a person to stay on top of the changing methods.