Mission Control
It won’t be your usual travel prize, that’s for sure. The flagship Dr Pepper brand at Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Inc., Plano, TX, teamed with Touchstone Pictures to give consumers a shot at traveling to the edge of space in a Russian MIG -25 Foxbat jet fighter.
Dr Pepper Mission Control breaks this month and runs through April in a tie-in with Touchstone’s March 10 release of the futuristic live-action thriller, Mission to Mars. Up to 10 grand-prize winners will get the airplane ride of their lives. Consumers can also instantly win one of 15 Kawasaki Prairie 300 all-terrain vehicles, 5,000 Mission to Mars soundtrack CDs, 10,000 tickets to the movie, or 500,000 12-packs of Dr Pepper. Game pieces are behind the labels of 20-ounce and two-liter bottles and inside 12-packs of 12-ounce cans.
Grand-prize winners will travel to Russia for their rendezvous with the Foxbat, then fly as high as 80,000 feet at twice the speed of sound.
“This is truly a spectacular opportunity for an ordinary citizen to experience first-hand the thrill of traveling to the outer reaches of our atmosphere,” says Dr Pepper senior vp-marketing Cindi Clark.
The brand has prominent product placement in the film, and will tout its promo in a 30-second network TV spot and full-page ads in People, Rolling Stone, and Premiere.
Retail P-O-P includes large displays, pole signs, shelf talkers, 3-D shelf extenders, vending-machine and cold-vault static clings, and rolling rack graphics.
CBS in January launched Club CBS, an interactive loyalty program that uses the Internet to get people to watch TV. Club CBS is tied to Iwon.com, a Web site that the network partly owns. Visitors to the site accumulate points by identifying a CBS “Star of the Day” and answering questions about CBS shows. They can swap points for entries into monthly contests with prizes like a trip to the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. The network is pushing the promo with print ads, TV spots, and Web ads. CBS will use the club to collect in-depth demographic information on its most loyal viewers. The network purchased a majority stake in Iwon.com parent CTC Bulldog in October for $30 million and a promise to contribute $70 million in ad time on CBS for Iwon.com.
Columbia TriStar Interactive teams with Wheel of Fortune on a multi-tiered programming and promo campaign for soapcity.com, the studio division’s site for soap fans.
SoapCity Week breaks during the February 7-11 sweeps week with five special episodes of Wheel partnering soap stars Deirdre Hall and Heather Tom with fans selected through national auditions. Fans play for cash and prizes; stars play for their favorite charity. Radio spots in five markets urge viewers to watch the show that week and answer trivia questions online to win prize packs with merchandise from the online SoapCity Store.
A co-branded Wheel/SoapCity site launched mid-January with a national sweeps giving away a Caribbean cruise. Wheel’s own site, wheeloffortune.com, features soap opera-related puzzles and links to SoapCity.com.
The effort unites two Sony Pictures Entertainment units, CTI and Columbia TriStar Television, which produces Wheel. “This partnership with Wheel of Fortune will be invaluable in broadening SoapCity’s exposure and authority within the soap opera community,” says SoapCity.com general manager Mary Coller.
Kellogg Co., Battle Creek, MI, last month broke TV advertising and a sweeps for Special K starring supermodel Cindy Crawford. Win a Makeover with Cindy’s Team centers on an on-pack sweeps running through March. Twelve- and 18-ounce boxes carry instant-win prizes including a trip to New York City for a full makeover by Crawford’s personal trainer and stylists (five winners), $350 gift certificates to local spas and a beauty bag including an autographed copy of Crawford’s fitness video (100 winners), and Crawford cosmetics (9,900 winners).
All winners get a year’s supply of Special K. A display contest for retailers will award $5,000 cash and Crawford’s video. A TV spot via Leo Burnett USA, Chicago, shows Crawford in outfits from past decades to show Special K is always in vogue.
Three years ago, Kellogg repositioned Special K as a healthy food (rather than a diet food) after consumers complained that the cereal’s ads reinforced unhealthy attitudes about being thin. First quarter is Special K’s peak season, thanks to New Year’s resolutions.
A few SKUs down the cereal aisle, General Mills, Minneapolis, rang in the New Year by putting newly minted 2000 pennies in 10 million boxes of Cheerios. Five thousand boxes carry a new gold dollar coin picturing Sacagawea (Lewis and Clark’s guide) and a little over two thousand have a certificate for 100 gold coins. The pennies come in plastic sleeves printed with the U.S. Mint’s seal and have a place for kids to write their name and the date. The pennies go into general circulation this month.
H.J. Heinz Co., Pittsburgh, PA, is repositioning Bagel Bites frozen pizza snacks with its first promo targeting tweens. The Bite Into Xcitement! sweepstakes rides Bagel Bites’s sponsorship of the 2000 ESPN Winter X Games, a first for the brand. Pro skateboarder Tony Hawk appears in radio spots that broke last month and will give away prizes at Bagel Bites’ tent during the Feb. 3-6 games. The sweeps runs through April 15 and gives away eight trips for four to the ESPN X Games Aug. 17-20 in San Francisco. Consumers enter online at bagelbites.com or via supermarket display tear pads. DDB, San Francisco, handles.
U.S. Tobacco Co., Greenwich, CT, is running an Ultimate Playboy Weekend sweeps for Rooster chewing tobacco. The five-month campaign will award a trip for four to the Playboy Mansion with Playmates as escorts, tickets to the June 16-18 Playboy Jazz Festival in L.A., and $5,000. Other prizes are autographed Inside the Playboy Mansion books, shirts, and magazine subscriptions. Consumers enter via mail; USTC will add entrants to its direct-marketing database. The company touts the sweeps at 90 sponsored events this spring and via direct mail, print ads, and P-O-P. Vogt/Wein, Westport, CT, handles. The shop is part of DraftWorldwide’s network.
Imoutdoors.com, a site catering to outdoor activities, has linked up with history’s most lucrative bass fishing tourney with a fantasy fishing game. Entrants at the Sherman, TX-based Web site compete by picking a fantasy team from fishermen competing in the 2000 Wal-Mart FLW Tour, which this year spans seven events and locations across the U.S. Cash awards at the tourney this year will total $4.4 million.
In The Fantasy Bass Challenge 2000, entrants collect points each tournament day based on total weight of the fish caught by their fantasy team. FBC 2000 has daily winners, individual tournament champions, and a grand-prize winner who will earn a two-day, all-expenses-paid fishing trip with FLW tour pro Randy Howell. Entrants must toss out $39.99 for registration for the seven-tourney tour, or $9.99 per tournament. FBC 2000 will be promoted on ESPN and ESPN2.
