May the Best Brand Win

IS THERE A BRAWNY MAN IN YOUR LIFE? Georgia-Pacific Corp. is betting that there is.

When the Atlanta-based marketer acquired the Brawny paper-towel business two years ago (as part of its acquisition of rival Fort James Corp.), it inherited a declining brand. “The marketing had been inconsistent and we needed to rebuild,” says senior brand marketing manager Michael Adams. “The best way to do that was to leverage the icon.”

With that in mind, Georgia-Pacific this summer hosted Do You Know A Brawny Man?, a contest that asked women to send in photos and 150-word descriptions explaining why their guy is as rugged as the product. Entries were accepted through July 30.

One dozen semi-finalists will travel to New York City to be photographed for a 2003 Brawny Man Calendar. Five finalists will be posted online at brawnyman.com in October for public voting on the top guy. The grand-prize winner gets a Dodge Durango (so does his nominator) and a limited run as the packaging model. Dedicated TV spots, print ads in USA Today and People magazine, and an eight-market mobile tour supported. DVC Worldwide, Morristown, NJ, handles.

In the contest’s first two weeks, more than 40,000 entries were downloaded from the site — a great start, especially considering that entry volume wasn’t a primary objective.

Nor is it a goal for many of the brand-focused contests currently in market. The tactic has experienced a resurgence of late, as brand marketers focus less on awareness and more on engendering customer interaction.

“Contests are gaining new life as brands look for effective ways to get their messages across,” says Jay Zempke, vp-business development at Gage Marketing Group, Minneapolis. “We’re not necessarily seeing more, but [we are seeing] better contests.”

“For the winner, the contest provides 15 minutes of fame. For the consumer, it provides a better opportunity to relate to the brand than just seeing it as they walk down the aisle,” says Adams.

So what’s the draw for consumers, who research shows have little time for shopping — let alone for writing 150-word essays?

“It’s a unique opportunity that consumers couldn’t get on their own,” says John Birmingham, director of advertising and brand management at Riverwoods, IL-based Discover Card, which lets football fans compete for a stint on ESPN’s College GameDay.

“Prizes are certainly part of the incentive, but the real motivation is the fundamental desire for recognition,” says Jeff Peterson, director of corporate promotion and marketing for Pillsbury, Minneapolis.

Don’t underestimate the competitive spirit, either. “Intelligence is a prized attribute, and people want to demonstrate it in any category,” says John McCauley, vp-marketing for New York City-based Loews Cineplex Entertainment, which is running a movie trivia contest as part of its Picture Perfect Summer campaign.

Contests also offer a certain level of integrity missing from other tactics. “Look at the mechanics of sweepstakes,” says Peterson. “There’s a mentality that ‘Everybody’s a winner.’ A sweepstakes is random. With a contest, you earn the prize.”

“It’s a great way to differentiate us from run-of-the-mill sweeps,” says E.J. Conlin, vp-affiliate marketing at ESPN. The Bristol, CT, cable network is preparing the third flight of The ESPN SportsFigures Challenge, a national essay contest that asks high school students to invent a new sport. Last year’s contest received 2,500 entries. Gage Marketing handles.

“If it’s sheer volume of entries you’re looking for, contests don’t do it,” says Sheri Westfal, vp at Manhasset, NY-based agency Marden-Kane. “But if it’s quality of entries you want,” then read on.

Quality Time

Contests provide an opportunity to present the brand essence in an engaging way — and to gain feedback from consumers on their own perceptions of the brand. “Marketers are looking to integrate contests with their brands,” says Jeff Corder, director of promotions at Marketing Werks, Chicago, which has handled contests for Hershey Foods. “A contest today has to show what the brand stands for.”

That’s a far cry from the former motivator, which can be summed up in three words: proof of purchase. “One of the main benefits of contests used to be the requirement of a purchase to enter,” says Peg Heetmann, president of Newtown, CT-based Promotion Mechanics. “That doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.”

Because of the additional work involved in participating, contests tend to attract brand loyalists who aren’t just entering to win the grand prize. That’s what prompted Green Bay WI-based Veg-All to launch a recipe contest next month — the first in the company’s 76-year history. The top prize is $7,000, which represents a thousand bucks for each of the seven ingredients that make up Veg-All. Ten first-prize winners will receive $700 apiece. The Goltz Seering Agency, Green Bay, WI, and The National Sweepstakes Co., Rochester, NY, handle.

Although a recipe contest is pretty standard for a food marketer, Veg-All believes “this will produce a greater transfer of information between us and our customers,” says associate business manager Christy Maier. “It should create stronger ties with our users, and allow us to build a database.”

Such data-mining capability is another reason for the recent contest wave. While marketers are limited as to what info they can collect through a sweeps — lest they cross the “consideration” line — a contest offers a lot more leeway.

Campbell Soup Co., Camden, NJ, has run a What Do You Do With Your Pace? recipe contest the last two years because it’s “a way to understand how our customers are actually using” the salsa, says Constance Hughes, senior promotion manager for Campbell’s sauces and prepared foods.

The contest, which averages 12,000 entries (and offers a $20,000 outdoor kitchen as grand prize), has produced some interesting tidbits. For example, this year’s grand-prize winner submitted a recipe for banana bread — not the first place you’d expect to find salsa.

“It’s interesting to get a life angle of who does this and who uses the product,” says Amanda Higgins, spokesperson for Thales Navigation, manufacturer of the Magellan GPS navigation system. Through September, the Santa Clara, CA-based company is fielding essays about the off-road adventures of Magellan users. The winner will be sponsored in the Jaos Adventure Road Rally, an annual “high-tech scavenger hunt” that sends participants into the Nevada desert looking for clues with their GPS devices. Promotion Mechanics handles.

Discover Card has taken some of the onus off this year’s GameDay Challenge to allow for more entries. Last year, videotaped auditions were accepted only from 25 participants who spent the entire college football season handicapping games (May PROMO); this season, entries will be accepted from anyone with a camera and a dream. An as-yet unidentified retail partner will host in-store auditions. (Marketing Werks handles.) “Last year, we got a lot of die-hard fans,” says Birmingham. “This year I think we’ll be attracting more middle-of-the-road [participants].”

Similarly, The Weather Channel softened requirements for its second-annual WeatherQuest contest, which this year let participants submit an essay about a unique weather experience in lieu of a video. The contest generated 1,500 entries in 2001.

“This is something unique to us,” says Marla Hoppenfield, vp-affiliate and ad sales marketing for the Atlanta-based network. “It lets us experience a live connection with our audience.”

It also provides programming: The two winners will be dispatched to Alaska, where their adventures will be taped for airing on the net’s Evening Edition.

Owning the Idea

Marketers also are realizing that a properly executed contest can be a point of differentiation. Whereas sweepstakes are temporary and disposable, the right contest can transcend its role as a promotional tool to become an actual franchise for the brand — think Guinness Win Your Own Pub in Ireland (which was retired in 1999 after six flights) or Nabisco’s Oreo Stacking Contest.

The best — and oldest — example is the Pillsbury Bake-Off, which debuted in 1949. The simple premise asks consumers to whip up their favorite dishes featuring Pillsbury ingredients. The contest has adapted to the times, and now includes an “Easy Cook Night” (for contemporary “on-the-go” eating habits) and a $1 million grand prize (up from $25,000). The final round brings 100 chefs together for a televised shootout, and thousands of recipe books are distributed annually. Eighty percent of female entrants now have careers; about 10 percent of entries in recent years came from men.

“A lot of promotions make a big splash when they begin. But unless you’re one of the people participating, they then fade out of awareness,” says Peterson. “With Bake-Off, you can see the participants on TV. It puts a face on them.”

Korbel Champagne is hoping to catch similar lightning in a bottle with Perfect Proposal, a spring campaign the Guerneville, CA, company launched in June with an evergreen plan in mind. The effort asks consumers to submit an essay on their dream wedding. The grand-prize winner, who will be announced Valentine’s Day 2003, earns $10,000 toward a honeymoon or reception, while three first-place winners get a diamond ring (from Diamond Trading Co.) and a professional event planner to bring their proposal to life.

“We don’t want this to be a one-time program,” says Korbel spokesperson Margie Healy. “We feel this is something we can bring back year after to year.”

We’ll drink to that.