Aye, Karamba!

Last year, Karamba helped Interbrew bring a little piece of America into bars across Belgium. Last month, the Brussels agency won top honors for the quirky campaign, which was named Best Promotion in the World at the 1999 World PRO Awards of Excellence, held before promo Expo in Chicago.

Eleven marketers and agencies took home Gold awards in 15 categories at this year’s judging. Eight winners were U.S. companies, with the other three coming from Europe.

Karamba’s winning campaign for Rolling Rock offered 400 bars monthly promotions, each pegged to an offbeat moment in U.S. history. Neck-hangers with old black & white photos gave a little history lesson, then invited patrons to play a game. End of Prohibition? Patrons drank from bottles wrapped in brown paper bags, each with a number on the bottom for a chance to win a 24-pack. First man on the moon? Patrons filled out reply cards to get a certificate of ownership for one acre on the moon. Entries went into an official “U.S. Mail” box on the bar.

Interbrew cemented Rolling Rock’s quirky American image, surpassed its sales goal, and stood firm on pricing despite bar managers’ grumblings. Karamba reports that all 400 bars re-signed for ’99 programs, and bars not included in the intro year clamored to get in on the second go-round.

The campaign also won Gold awards for account-specific and art direction.

Although Karamba gained the top award, U.S. agencies elsewhere made a good showing this year after sparse representation on the ’98 and ’97 award lists. Latin America winners, meanwhile, were scarce after dominating the top ranks last year. Programs for three U.S. marketers – DaimlerChrysler’s Jeep, Malt-O-Meal, and Nabisco’s SnackWell’s – each struck Gold in two categories.

The PRO Awards, co-sponsored by promo Magazine and the Association of Promotion Marketing Agencies Worldwide (APMA), were judged by a panel of journalists and marketing professionals from around the world.

Here are the rest of the best for ’99:

Best Concept and Trial Generation

Malt-O-Meal, Northfield, MN, wanted to convince shoppers that its value-priced bagged cereal tastes as good as national brands. So agency WatersMolitor, Minneapolis, hired twins to offer samples in 1,200 supermarkets. Twins gave side-by-side taste tests, challenging shoppers to tell the difference. Ads, packaging, and displays reinforced the tagline “Betcha can’t taste the difference.” Malt-O-Meal sales increased eight-fold – that’s right, 800 percent – in stores with sampling. Four-hour demos sold four times more volume than the average eight-hour demo, and 80 percent of shoppers who tried Malt-O-Meal bought it.

Best Use of Media

Triangle Communications, London, helped Cadbury’s Creme Egg make the most of its brief January-to-Easter selling season by playing off the popularity of its 10-year-old ad slogan, “How do you eat yours?” Recent ads have starred bald comedian George Dawes, so Cadbury offered an “Egg Head cap” (a beige swim cap for would-be baldies) to consumers who called in to describe how they eat Cadbury’s Creme Eggs. Fifty winners got trips to Cadbury World theme park to be filmed eating eggs; the best 12 appeared in a special TV spot that aired Easter Monday. Sales rose 35 percent over the year before.

Best Copy and Direct/Database Marketing

DaimlerChrysler’s Jeep division wanted to sign up 2,500 owners for its annual Camp Jeep event. Jeep and agencies Budco, Detroit, and Bozell Advertising, Southfield, MI, started with a database of 1.3 million owners, identified 450,000 most likely to attend the camp (based on past responses and proximity to the Virginia location), and sent a series of mailings to best prospects. Camp Jeep was sold out two months before the target date.

Best Display Activity

Chiquita Brands International, Cincinnati, doubled banana sales by forming the Chiquita Banana Summer Fun Club. Families picked up charts in-store to track healthy eating and exercise habits for five weeks, then mailed them in for premiums and chances to win prizes. The Botsford Group, Atlanta, handled.

Best Traffic Building

Blockbuster Video, Dallas, and agency Promotional Resources Group,New York City, hit a film industry record by pre-selling one million videocassettes with a Blockbuster Midnight Sale for Paramount Pictures’ Titanic. Premiums including a special-issue $5 gift card and posters had Leo aficionados lined up at Blockbusters in the wee hours on the video’s first day of release. The first 100 to rent or buy Titanic got a “boarding pass” to call and enter a sweeps to win a cruise or trip to Paramount’s theme park. Entrants had to call within 48 hours; Blockbuster clocked 865,000 rings within the first hour – that’s midnight to 1 a.m. – and more than 2 million calls total.

Best Loyalty/Continuity

SmithKline Beecham Consumer Healthcare, Pittsburgh, developed a Committed Quitters Program in-house to support Nicorette gum and NicoDerm CQ patch. Packages contain a toll-free number consumers can call to enroll in the 12-week support program. A questionnaire asks about smoking history, reasons for quitting, and fear of relapse. Weekly mailings are tail-ored by the information.

Best Usage/Loading

Boise Cascade Office Products and agency Louis London, St. Louis, brought peace, love, and groovy office products to secretaries and office managers everywhere with its Boise Cascade World Tour ’98. Boise sales reps offered to take customers’ pictures with a hippie standee; product catalogs advanced the retro-’70s theme. A tie-in with Rhino Records provided CDs for end-user and sales rep incentives. Boise reached nirvana with a 22-percent sales increase and $21 million in sales of promoted items.

Best Integration and Image Enhancement

Nabisco, Parsippany, NJ, relaunched its flagging SnackWell’s line with new formulations. To reinforce its “Live well. Snack well” self-esteem positioning, SnackWell’s hosted day-long mother/ daughter workshops in 27 cities (a joint effort with Lifetime Television and non-profit Girls Inc.). It also gave away mother/daughter journals with purchase, and hosted activities at women’s health expos. WatersMolitor, Minneapolis, handled all events. Six months into the relaunch, SnackWell’s had stemmed its 25-percent sales decline with a three-percent rise.