I Saw the Light

Talk about inspiration: Every one of this year’s Market Leaders created a groundbreaking campaign, or made some other contribution to the promotional art. One pair generated buzz for something that doesn’t exist yet. Another leader shook up the agency business. All moved the needles at their companies. Are there other marketers who deserve to be listed? Sure. But there is much to learn from the 10 featured here.

World Class

Adidas owns the World Cup tournament — again

Talk about a running start.

Adidas shelled out $200 million to sponsor last summer’s World Cup soccer tournament in Germany. And it quickly saw the return on investment.

The event tie-in helped boost second-quarter revenue by 20% to $2.33 billion.

And that was due not to the price tag but to a holistic marketing effort spanning many countries — and to high visibility during the games.

It started last October with a blast that included television, print, billboards, retail signage and online ads. Titled “+10” (plus 10), it celebrated “individual brilliance on the field,” says Eric Liedtke, the company’s global brand marketing director.

Then Adidas ran a football competition for youngsters called the +10 Challenge. It was supported by a road show that went to Rio de Janeiro, Mexico City, Johannesburg, Los Angeles, Tokyo, Beijing, Milan, London and Moscow.

“Adidas’ core audience is teenage soccer players and fans,” Liedtke says. “But given the broad reach that the World Cup has, we had the opportunity to speak to an even larger audience of soccer fans both in the U.S. and abroad.”

But things got even better when the games began. For starters, Adidas’ +Teamgeist soccer balls were used in every game. The trophy awarded to the most valuable player was dubbed the Adidas Golden Ball. And the players donned Adidas football boots, the model known as the +F50 Tunit.

In addition, Adidas sponsored and outfitted what turned out to be the top three teams: Argentina, Germany and France.

“Adidas was the most visible brand during the tournament with very prominent boarding positions at every game,” Liedtke says. “We outfitted tens of thousands of volunteers, stewards, ball boys and all of the referees.”

And this created world-class results. Addias sold over 15 million +Teamgeist balls during the games and over 3 million team jerseys. Total sales hit the $1.3 billion mark, 30% over the last World Cup games in 2002.

Off field, the German-based company erected a football park in front of the German parliamentary building. This facility allowed 10,000 fans to view the games on closed-circuit TV and to take in acts like Black Eyed Peas.

Online, soccer fans flocked Adidas.myplus10.com for tournament coverage. There, an Impossible Team online game enabled fans to interact in an Adidas-branded tournament where top players received prizes, including a trip to London to meet a British soccer team and attend one of their games.

How is Adidas going to top this? It’s a no-brainer: The firm has already arranged to sponsor the 2010 and 2014 World Cups.
— Andrew Scott

Digging Volvo

Volvo breaks ground with global Pirates treasure hunt

Some promotions are hard to measure. But not the one started by Volvo last summer.

The automaker generated $4 million in U.S. vehicle sales with a seven-figure campaign tied to Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. What’s more, “The ROI far outweighed the expenditure,” says Linda Gangeri, national ad manager for Volvo Cars of North America.

Volvo had already partnered with Disney to feature a Pirates-themed yacht in its Ocean Race. But it needed a way to create interest in the brand during the summer sell-down period.

“We kind of scratched our heads,” Gangeri recalls. ‘A pirate movie and a car company: What does one do with that from a marketing perspective?’”

The answer was to bury an $82,000 Volvo XC90 SUV on the island of Abaco in the Bahamas, and invite consumers to find it as part of Volvo’s first global campaign.

“What better thing to do than continue the theme of buried treasure?” Gangeri asks.

Titled, simply, “The Hunt,” the contest was promoted in TV spots, online ads, e-mail and P-0-P.

That initial blast lured people to their Volvo dealers for treasure maps. Soon, there were 112,898 registrants using the maps to find clues online, and those who found them advanced to the next round.

“It took a life of its own because it was so viral,” Gangeri says. “People just flocked to it.”

But this wasn’t just for fun. All 52,000 U.S. players received a $500 coupon toward the purchase of a new Volvo. And by early November, 108 people had redemed them.

Meanwhile, Volvo flew seven finalists to the Bahamas for the contest finale.

While the lucky seven competed in mental and physical contests, workers uncovered the SUV.

The moment of truth arrived when the vehicle, having been buried three months before in a moisture-controlled container, emerged in pristine condition and started on the first try.

“It was the highlight of my hunt experience,” Gangeri says.

The big prize was won by David Hutz of Herndon, VA. But all the finalists were handed keys to a new Volvo.

Volvo chronicled the spectacle in a series of Webisodes on Volvocars.us/thehunt.

THE VERDICT?

“This gave us an opportunity to reach out in a different way and create a fun environment,” says Gangeri, who has led Volvo’s national advertising since 2004.

Her team is now discussing promotional plans for the third Pirates installment, due out May 25.

“How do you top this?” Gangeri says. “I have my creative team already brainstorming. We are very, very excited and eager to dig in deep.”
— Amy Johannes

Rubber Band Man

Bob Thacker gives OfficeMax a sense of humor

Paper and ink may not be the sexiest products around. But that doesn’t mean that marketing for them has to be boring.

So says Bob Thacker, who joined OfficeMax last November, and promptly started performing wacky stunts like painting models outside the Chicago Art Institute.

Not that there’s anything funny about the numbers at OfficeMax. Last year’s sales fell by 31% to just under $9.2 billion.

The brand needed a new push, but that was a tall order given that the marketing budget had been tightened.

Not that Thacker was daunted. “If you don’t have big bucks, you have to have big ideas,” he says. So he started looking for “incongruous” elements to blend together.

This resulted in “Human Art Gallery” events in Chicago and Minneapolis. The purpose: to launch OfficeMax Filling Stations, machines at which customers can refill their printer cartridges for half the cost of new ones.

As crowds watched, 10 human models had their backs painted with images of local icons (Blues Brothers for Chicago, Paul Bunyan for Minneapolis). Onlookers were given the chain’s trademark rubber band balls and coupons for a free ink cartridge refill.

Thacker won’t disclose sales, but the Filling Stations are so busy — and in need of maintenance — that the chain barely has time to install new ones, he says. (Not to worry: All 844 OfficeMax stores should have them early in the new year.)

Better yet, the effort was far cheaper than an ad campaign would have been, and this is in line with Thacker’s credo: “Don’t make ads, make news.”

The joker’s next prank targeted eighth graders in Tuckahoe, NY. With Thacker’s conniving, the principal called in 30 students for a July “test” to prove they were ready for high school. Their reactions were secretly filmed by Disney.

The whole school (including the 30 kids chosen by the principal for the prank test) were then rewarded with a live concert by heartthrob Jesse McCartney. The resulting TV show, School’d, aired on Disney’s cable network, ABC Family. And parts of it were included on a DVD that has fetched up to $30 on eBay.

The DVD was given away in-store with purchases of $50 or more; roughly 50,000 were distributed. And clips posted on Google Video drew 6 million views.

In the end, this promotion did well for everyone concerned.

For starters, OfficeMax gave the under-funded school free supplies and $80,000 to restore programming that had been cut.

But that’s not all. The firm’s back-to-school sales rose 1%, after falling in 2005.

Overall sales still have to catch up. So far this year, retail sales are flat at $6.7 billion for the first nine months, but the chain has 71 fewer stores than it did last year. Meanwhile, contract sales are up 3.8% to $3.5 billion for the nine months.
— Betsy Spethmann

Drink Your Milk

New auction site for teens promotes a healthy beverage

How do you get teenagers to drink more milk?

Try the same marketing tactic that gets them to drink soda.

That’s what the International Dairy Foods Association did when it started Body by Milk. The auction program lets teens bid on thousands of items online.

The person who invented it, Julie Buric, knows about soda marketing. She worked on the launch of Pepsi Stuff more than a decade ago as a staffer at TracyLocke.

And she concedes that it’s “hard to compete with the flash and bling” of those brands.

But Body by Milk has an asset of its own: an association with the 12-year-old Milk Mustache print ad campaign, featuring celebrities like soccer star David Beckham.

And it had DraftFCB, which persuaded Adidas to participate, and to bring Beckham with it.

Buric, who started at IDFA eight years ago, helped sell the program to retailers and processors. Then she tackled schools, which were willing to cooperate.

As Buric found out, foodservice directors were happy to hang celebrity posters, for it helped them with their own wellness initiatives. Indeed, they demanded more, so she came up with Body by Milk.

“We wanted to bring milk back to teens in a relevant way,” says Buric, who was recently promoted to vice president-marketing.

As it stands now, the program lets teens bid on 12,000 items from brands like Adidas, baby phat, Fender, CCS and Roland. The theme? “Reward your body, reward yourself.”

But there’s more to it than that. A separate auction lets student councils and other school groups bid on items like brand equipment, computers and admissions to the David Beckham Academy soccer camp.

Are teenagers swilling more milk as a result? There are signs that they are.

Body by Milk drew 34,044 registrants and 2,127 bids in the first two months after its August launch, and that number should grow next year when new brands come on board, including a family cruise line.

Oddly, the weakest link of the program is also its strongest.

“Our limitation is that we don’t own the processors, so we can’t put codes under cap to be banked automatically online,” Buric says.

That means kids have to physically collect the packaging and mail the UPCs and bar codes in after their bids are accepted. As Buric says, “that shows a real level of commitment for kids who want to be involved in this.”
— Betsy Spethmann

On the Line

Howard Draft emerges as top dog at DraftFCB

Not everyone thought that the June merger of Draft Worldwide and Foote Cone Belding was a good idea.

Chicago Sun-Times marketing columnist Lewis Lazare wrote that the day of the announcement “will go down as one of the darkest moments in the history of an increasingly troubled ad industry…It’s a shame to think that an agency like Draft, that was once the lowly tail on a big, healthy, creatively inspired canine, has finally emerged as the powerhouse wagging the mangy mutt that is now the general consumer ad business.”

Think again, Lewis (and tighten up your prose while you’re at it). Draft is now the top dog, and it happened because CEO Howard Draft refused to be stereotyped.

Promotions? Direct marketing? Draft can do both. But what it really excels at is delivering measureable results in any channel, and making sense out of the whole.

Thus, CEO Howard Draft demurred when FCB wanted to round out its below-the-line capabilities. “I said, ‘Let’s break down the silos; no above or below the line,” he says.

The result was the merger of the year, and the ascension of Draft as leader of the mega-agency.

Will it work? Parent company Interpublic Group of Cos. had merged some of its agency holdings before — FCB and Bozell, Lintas and Lowe — but always within the same marketing discipline, and generally with less-than- impressive results. But this one seems to be proving out.

In October, DraftFCB won the $570 million Wal-Mart account. “The key was showing them what we can do in real time, and making the most of the data,” Draft says.

DraftFCB is set up to deliver integrated campaigns. There’s a single creative staff and a five-member team running each account. And if they need help with disciplines like promotion and research, they can turn to “global capability heads.”

Thus, it is no problem if a Wal-Mart changes its marketing mix. “Our job as an ad group is to use all the tools and channels to drive clients’ business,” Draft says.

But he does have his worries. “The thing that keeps me up at night is this: Will clients get there fast enough?” he says. “Twenty-eight years ago, our plan was to hire the best in class and let the clients integrate it. Now, we need a single-mindedness on the client side — not just for integration, but for a holistic approach.”

And how is the merger working out internally?

“Management is on board,” Draft says. “We just need to push down [the program] through the system.”

He adds that the agencies’ cultures “weren’t that different.” They shared a “roll-up-your-sleeves, get-it-done Midwestern culture.” In January, they will have a single P&L.

No clients have left because of the merger, Draft adds. “They’ve got a deeper organization with us now. If they liked us before, we’re even stronger now.”

He laughs that columnist Lazare will be “eating his words when he sees all the accounts we’re about to land.”

Draft’s own goal for 2007? “Training, training and training,” he says. “We’re spending millions of dollars on creating a new type of ad agency. We need to train everyone on how it will work.”

His other goal: A little vacation time this month. “I’ve seen a lot of airports this year,” he sighs.
— Betsy Spethmann

Cups of Cheer

McDonald’s Mary Dillon puts real people loving life on the restaurant’s packaging

Picture this: you’re eating lunch at McDonald’s and reach for a large Coke to wash down your Filet-O-Fish. But instead of Ronald McDonald’s smiling mug on the cup, you see…yourself.

It could happen. This past spring, McDonald’s staged a global casting call, asking everyday people to send in 100-word essays and digital photos illustrating what they love most about life. Out of the more than 13,000 who responded to McDglobalcasting.com, 25 were chosen to be featured on the fast food titan’s paper cups and bags.

The buzz building initiative — part of the restaurant’s “i’m lovin’ it” campaign — was designed to tap into the popularity of user-generated content. It took nearly two years to plan and execute the promotion, which was available in 16 different languages.

“It was kind of an experiment for us,” Mary Dillon, McDonald’s executive vice president and global CMO, says. “We thought, ‘Let’s see what happens.’”

McDonald’s used a shoestring budget to push the casting call on its packaging and on the Internet — and it paid off. The eight-week-long campaign drew more than 13 million visits to the microsite, 1.2 million page views and submissions from more than 100 countries. That’s a feat for Dillon, who just completed her first full year on the job.

“We saw there was a lot of passion for our brand,” Dillon says. “Thirteen thousand [entries] is a large number.”

That passion crossed demographic lines. The “i’m lovin’ it” campaign typically targets young people in the 15-24 range; however, entries came in from consumers spanning in age from five to 60-plus.

The finalists chosen by McDonald’s and agencies The Marketing Store, Chicago, and The Boxer Agency, Birmingham, England, included an Australian swing dancer, a U.S. street luger and a Brazilian sign language teacher. In August, the 25 “stars” flew to London for a posh trip and celebrity photo shoot with photographer Nick Clements.

The new packaging debuts in the first quarter of 2007.

“It was just a great opportunity to show our customers that we understand how they like to engage with brands,” she notes. “We’re having fun. While we are an over 50-year-old brand, we stay fresh and relevant to our customers around the world.”

Although spokesperson Tara McLaren Handy says McDonald’s will market to U.S. consumers who opted in to receive additional e-mails from the company, the campaign was never intended as a sales driver.

“We weren’t looking for this to have a short-term increase in store sales,” Dillon says. “This was all about driving long-term engagement with our brand.”

McDonald’s toughest task now is to stay on top and outdo itself with other promotions. But Dillon isn’t worried.

“To me, experimentation is a good thing,” Dillon says. “Let’s keep doing it.”
— Amy Johannes

The Real Deal

Jim Smits serves dinner for Supervalu

When Supervalu bought Albertsons for $17.4 billion last July, it got more than a grocery store chain.

It also got a marketing executive named Jim Smits.

And with Smits came a promotional program called Meal Deals.

Fortunately, Supervalu recognized what it had. To prove it, it named Smits as its group vice-president merchandising for the parent company, the same title he held at Albertsons for two years.

Even better, it told him to continue Meal Deals, and to expand it to at least 1,600 Supervalu stores.

“It’s great when you go to a meeting and your program gets a unanimous vote pretty quickly,” Smits says. “That really validates the work.”

So just what is this winner?

Promoted with a refrigerated display at the front of each store, Meal Deals offers shoppers a full meal at a significant discount. Anyone who buys the featured meat item gets a Fresh Express salad and a side dish for free.

The initial idea came from produce marketer Fresh Express, and its promotion agency, CoActive Marketing Group. Fresh Express approached Albertsons, funded the coolers and worked with up to four brand partners to produce a new menu every two weeks. Smits, a 20-year grocery veteran, coordinated the project.

Apparently it worked for everyone. Participating brands have seen dollar sales jump nearly 30% over the past year, an average 40% over baseline sales.

But there will be some changes in 2007. For one, Supervalu plans to bring the program in-house, although Fresh Express will have a part of each meal through the end of the year.

This will make P-O-P production cheaper, freeing money for media support. It will also give the chain’s divisions a vested interest in the project.

For another, Supervalu also wants to convert it from a coupon-based program to one involving frequent-shopper cards.

One other change is that Smits will have to move from Boise, ID, where Albertsons is headquartered, to Supervalu’s home base in Minneapolis. His is one of 400 jobs that will be shifted over the next 18 months. (A Texan, he has his doubts about the Minnesota winters.)

Other than that, Smits’ biggest challenge this year has been the merger, “keeping everyone focused on the day-to-day while we take smaller groups and try to reengineer what the future looks like,” he says.

Cross-functional teams are working on future plans, leaving operations staff free to focus on the customer. Smits, who will now lead development of other marketing programs, is “impressed with the associates we’ve got in the game.”

HIS GOAL?

“Two to three dinners a week are consumed away from home,” he says. “If we can intercept one or two of those from a competitor, and not necessarily another grocery store, that’s a significant increase in our sales growth.”
— Betsy Spethmann

Girl Talk

Unilever gets racy in its Hairapy campaign for young women

Is your hair limper than your boyfriend after a few drinks?

That kind of saucy copy set the tone in July for the North American launch of Sunsilk hair products.

“I’m not a textbook marketer,” says Tiffany Kurtz, the brand marketing manager for Unilever, who is responsible for the so-called Hairapy campaign. (Hairapy? Yes. The name is a play on therapy for the hair and life’s other problems).

Obviously, there are many hair-challenged young women out there, and Kurtz knows how to reach them. GetHairapy.com, the online nucleus, had pulled 1.5 million visitors as of last month, and e-mail opt-in rates have grown by 1004%.

But this is one effort for which nothing was left to chance.

Kurtz and her team spent seven months last year following a group of young females around the clock to better understand their lifestyle. That meant shopping, partying, eating pizza, even chasing the girls on campus.

Meanwhile, a casting call was made for young men who could play the role of “Hairipist” or a girl’s best gay-guy friend.

“We found that girls can be put off by other girls,” Kurtz explains. “There is an immediate wall that goes up.”

Teams with three Hairipists apiece visited 50 cities last summer, hitting places where girlfriends are known to hang out, like bars and beaches.

They gave advice and handed out samples. (Watch out, girls: Not all of the guys may be gay).

Unilever also distributed millions of $1-off gift cards through tip-ins in People, Cosmopolitan, Jane and Lucky.

Why gift cards instead of coupons? Because the girls referred to coupons as “something my grandmother uses to buy mashed potatoes.”

As Kurtz says, “We took a traditional tactic and flipped it on its head.”

That wasn’t all. Working with lead promotion agency 141 Worldwide, Unilever distributed door hangers and pink-branded matchboxes cautioning that dry hair is “extremely flammable.” These were passed out in bars.

In addition, a CD-shaped direct mail piece was mailed to more than 1 million users of competitive products. And GetHairapy.com was advertised on posters in bathroom stalls, bar napkins, martini glasses and in mall kiosks.

Finally, a two-to-three minute mini-movie was produced about the life of a 25 year-old girl and aired for 13 weeks on TBS following Sex and the City, a popular show among the target group. A sponsored tag at the end pushed girls online.

“We told a story in totality and that came from really knowing the consumer inside and out,” Kurtz says.
— Patricia Odell

This Site’s For You

Anheuser-Busch prepares to launch Bud.TV

This may be the first time a market leader was chosen for something that hasn’t happened yet. But Jim Schumacker and Tony Ponturo deserve the honor because they are the brains behind Bud.TV, the online network about to be launched by Anheuser-Busch.

Though the start date is two months away, Bud.TV is already one of the most talked-about marketing programs in years.

That doesn’t mean the $30 million project has had an easy birth.

Schumacker, the vice president of digital marketing for Anheuser-Busch, pushed his idea a number of times without success. It wasn’t until he brought it to Ponturo, vice president of global media and sports marketing for the brewer, that he was given the green light to begin development.

The next challenge was delivering on that promise.

“Any marketing expenditure comes with a certain level of risk,” Ponturo says. “However, as with our mainstream marketing efforts, the benefits of Bud.TV far outweigh that risk.”

What would those benefits be? Enhancement of Bud’s image, and those of all Anheuser-Busch brands.

Created with help from DDB Worldwide, Bud.TV will contain eight channels. One will offer comedy, another sports. Yet another, BudTube, will play on the popular social networking site YouTube.

The site will also be the launching pad for things like a reality game show that will be filmed in bars. Anheuser-Busch is planning a casting call for people to appear.

Meanwhile, Ponturo is using his entertainment and sports connections to bring in content. Schumacker is in charge of the creative. And the audience, a group that consists mostly of males ages 21 to 27, is being invited to contribute material, the funnier the better.

How did a brand that has relied mostly on mainstream media find its way to the Internet?

One eye-opener came two years ago when Anheuser-Busch ran Wardrobe Malfunction, an online parody of Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl blooper. Some 1.7 million people viewed it within one week.

That response showed that interest could be generated by something other than a TV spot. Accordingly, Anheuser-Busch doubled its spending on the Internet last year to 10% of its total media budget.

“The Internet as a branding medium is still relatively untapped by major marketers,” Schumacker says. “By becoming a leader in the world of digital entertainment, Bud.TV gives our company a platform to better compete for ‘share of mind’ among our core consumers.”

Watch for the Superbowl ads for Bud.TV, which launches on Feb. 7, the day after the big game.

Will Bud.TV pay out?

“I think year in and year out, we’ve proven that we can consistently deliver the type of clever, humorous creative that prompted 22 million people to seek out our Super Bowl ads online after the game last season,” Ponturo says.
— Patricia Odell

Cingular Idea

Wireless provider converts stores to serve Hispanics

You think you’ve faced tough marketing challenges?

How about converting 514 stores into another language?

That’s what Cingular did this year in an effort to reach Hispanics.

And not just any Hispanics — it wanted the unacculturated, or those who speak Spanish or are bi-lingual.

Actually, Cingular already had a presence in that market. But it wanted to talk to those customers in a more “culturally relevant way,” says Roberto García, executive director of Cingular Hispanic Marketing.

That meant replacing English P-O-Ps with bilingual ones and training sales reps in selling techniques.

Where did Cingular find its target? In locales in which at least 40% of the population is Hispanic.

That included towns in California, Texas, Illinois, New York and Florida, and in emerging Hispanic markets like Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia and Oregon.

But that wasn’t enough. “After converting the stores, we needed a grassroots marketing strategy,” García says.

So the stores staged meet-and-greet events with Latino celebrities and sports stars. In Los Angeles, more than 700 fans waited for 10 hours to meet Pavel Pardo, Mexico’s MVP soccer player.

Once inside, store reps were on hand to answer questions.

The result of all this? Foot traffic rose by up to 20%, and sales jumped by almost 30%, García says. And this contributed to a 9.1% increase in Cingular’s third-quarter revenue to $9.6 billion.

And that may only be the start. Hispanic purchasing power totaled $767.8 billion last year, compared with $564.3 billion six years ago. And it is still growing.

Thus, Cingular also reaches out through Spanish-language ad campaigns and celebrity sponsorships. For example, it sponsors Lili Estefan and Raúl de Molina, co-hosts of the top-rated Univision talk show El Gordo y la Flaca.

It also offers an extensive library of digital content for cellular phones, including games, ringtones and news, sports and weather updates in Spanish.

Service is also in Spanish. Customers can receive their phone bills in the language, and they can also visit the Web site Cingular.com/espanol.

What’s next?

“We will be signing a contract with an entertainment company next year so that we can expand our library of Latin ringtones by specific genre, and provide more categories so that consumers can also watch music videos of Latin artists on their phones,” García says. — Andrew Scott