Summer Splashes
Memorial Day is only a few weeks away, and beverage brands are ready with a bevy of summer initiatives.
Coca-Cola Co., Atlanta, will run an instant-win game inside packages of regular and caffeine-free Coke multi-packs. Winners find a prize disk under the can’s false lid or behind bottle labels. Thousands of prizes will be distributed, including a handful of $1 million jackpots and walk-on roles in Universal Studios movies and music videos. The It Could Be Your Next Coke effort runs through August 1. Momentum, St. Louis, developed the campaign. National TV and radio spots support. Coke is also readying a Sprite-branded instant-win game tied to a fashion company unnamed at press time.
Meanwhile, rival PepsiCo is reincarnating its famous Pepsi Challenge samplings of the ’70s and ’80s. The effort will reportedly run in conjunction with already developed customized-CD promotions, a Major League Baseball sponsorship, and a program at local events and malls. GMR Marketing, New Berlin, WI, handles.
Pepsi Stuff is also returning, this time with a partner in cyberspace. Purchase, NY-based Pepsi is teaming with Yahoo, Santa Clara, CA, on a late summer effort being dubbed Pepsi Stuff.com. The under-the-cap promo will offer access to online rewards and discounts via 1.5 billion single-serve bottles. The five-month effort will launch in August. Consumers will collect points under caps of 20-ounce and one-liter bottles and redeem them online at a co-branded Pepsi/Yahoo Web site. PepsiStuff.com will also hold auctions of rare items from Pepsi and its promotional partners. Bottles will feature a “Pepsi Stuff.com, Powered by Yahoo” tagline. Yahoo will also receive logo placement on P-O-P materials in some 50,000 retail stores. TLP, Inc., Dallas, handles.
Dr Pepper/Seven Up, Plano, TX, will look to fire up sales of single-bottle beverages with a promo tied to Jive Records, New York City. Consumers will have a one-in-24 chance of winning a custom Dance Party CD from Jive through specially marked labels on 20-ounce bottles. (Local bottlers have the option to bolster the promotion by offering an under-the-cap promotion for free product.)
Among it’s other brands, Dr Pepper/Seven Up’s Squirt team will break an under-the-cap sweeps pitched to 18-to-25-year-olds. Winners score Kawasaki Jet Ski watercrafts, Squirt-branded Hyperlite wake boards, and other prizes. Meanwhile, a Sail in Style with Schweppes effort will highlight the tonic water and ginger ale brands with a Mediterranean cruise giveaway offered in conjunction with Windstar Cruises. Canada Dry’s Take to the Skies instant-win promo will offer a grand-prize winner unlimited trips to 250 cities for one year via American Airlines. Sunkist’s Hang at the Hobie House sweeps offers a vacation at a beach house in Southern California aswell as kayaks, body boards, and skateboards. A&W offers consumers the chance to cruise in style through the Thickheaded for the Open Road sweepstakes, which awards a Winnebago to the grand-prize winner and ice coolers to others. Hawaiian Punch’s The Ultimate Backyard Luau serves the winner a backyard party with food and music. Other prizes include Sony boom boxes, Hawaiian Punch disposable cameras, and T-shirts. Lastly, Country Time Lemonade rolls into summer with the Stand for Fun sweepstakes, teaming with Boulder, CO-based bicycle maker Schwinn to give away a limited edition Sting-Ray bike.
The Marketing Continuum, Dallas, handles the Sunkist and A&W efforts. The Integer Group, Lakewood, CO, handles Squirt, Canada Dry, and Hawaiian Punch. Coker Golley, Atlanta, handles Schweppes and helped with creative on Country Time and A&W. Target Marketing and Promotions, Boston, handles Country Time.
If at first The Force isn’t with you, try, try again. Although reports said Louisville, KY-based Tricon Global Restaurants would not participate in the video release of Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace after faring so poorly with its theatrical tie-in, the company’s KFC chain quietly last month began putting leftover toy inventory into kids’ happy meals. A national FSI with coupons contained small graphics and copy announcing the promotion.
A KFC spokesperson acknowledged the premium effort, admitting that “stores do have [premiums] left over,” but declined to comment further. Tricon chairman Andrall Pearson declared last summer that the company’s Star Wars campaign “was surprisingly ineffective at driving sales and actually slowed momentum in the U.S.” (October 1999 Promo).
Eastman Kodak continues its push to endear one-time-use cameras to young consumers with a 20-city mall tour that began last month in San Francisco.
The focal point of the Through Your Eyes promotion is Rochester, NY-based Kodak’s sponsorship of hot teen rock band Youngstown. The band will play a concert at each venue. Meanwhile, retail packages featuring a Youngstown CD, a Kodak Max one-time-use camera, and a supplement from teen magazine Jump will be on sale at nearby Sam Goody stores. Mall rats can also enter a photo contest inviting them to use the Max cameras to catch classmates helping the community in some way (turning down blaring car radios does not count). Winners score a trip to Disney World to hang with the band.
Chicago-based mall developer General Growth Properties signed on as partner and will host the tour, which will wrap next month. Online partner Alloy.com will host a Youngstown portal site.
St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch has grabbed supermodel Daniela Pestova – fresh from her cover shot in Sports Illustrated – to headline its Bud Summer 2000 promotion. The effort, which breaks nationally this month and runs through Labor Day via two executions, centers on an instant-win program with a $3 million prize pool tagged to Budweiser and Bud Light.
>From Memorial Day through July 4, the effort will carry a “Grab a Taste of >Paradise” theme. P-O-P will feature beach graphics, and instant-win prizes >include trips to Eastern Caribbean island Nevis and portable Panasonic DVD >players. After the 4th, the promo will carry a “Make it a Summer Down >Under” tagline, with components promoting A-B’s sponsorship of the U.S. >Olympic Teams at the Sydney Games. Red, white, and blue P-O-P will invade >stores, and instant-prizes will include trips to the Games and 3Com >PalmPilots.
A-B is plastering Pestova on all promotional materials (wouldn’t you?), which also carry a $10.95 self-liquidating offer for the supermodel’s calendar and coupons good for Kingsford charcoal and KC Masterpiece barbecue sauce. The Waylon Co., St. Louis, handles the effort.
Coors Brewing Co., Golden, CO, this month cracks open a Coors Light Double Down effort featuring ATM-like cards in millions of can packages of Coors Light and original Coors. Consumers remove the card, call a toll-free number, key in the PIN number, and find out if they’ve won cash or prizes. Cash winners can keep the money or “double down” by entering a subsequent round to win more cash. In the two weeks surrounding July 4, the prize pool will be enhanced with larger cash prizes. P-O-P and radio ads from The Integer Group, Lakewood, CO, support. Former Baywatch bombshell Gena Lee Nolin will be featured in some components. The campaign runs through July.
Tommy Hilfiger this month takes its new portfolio of toiletries to malls and strip centers nationwide. The Tommy’s Wireless Phone Sweepstakes effort hits Hilfiger in-store boutiques and fragrance counters in 1,800 department stores nationally.
Customers sample new fragrances and other items, then enter to win a custom Motorola TalkABout wireless phone bearing New York City-based Hilfiger’s logo. One shopper at each store will win. The effort, handled by Stamford, CT-based EMCI, concludes June 1. Motorola supplied the phones, while AT&T kicked in a free year of phone service for winners. “Cell phones are considered a fashion accessory these days,” says Denise Parpard, director of promotion marketing with Hilfiger Toiletries.
Once the effort runs its course, Hilfiger Toiletries will start focusing on Tommy’s American Runner Race, a cause initiative for which the company hosts local running races and festivals over the July 4 weekend. Proceeds benefit the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
New York City-based Hebrew National this month launches an instant-win game on five million packages of regular and reduced-fat hot dogs. The Buy the Franks, Win the Rolls effort offers a grand-prize winner a vintage Rolls Royce. A pool of 43,000 other prizes includes Weber grills, gourmet foods, and Hebrew National coupons. The effort runs through August.
New York City-based Simon Spotlight, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing, is partnering with Camden, NJ-based Campbell Soup Co. for an on-pack campaign to promote a line of books based on Nickelodeon’s animated Wild Thornberrys series. As part of Viacom, Inc., Nickelodeon is a sister company to Simon & Schuster.
A mail-in offer for Wild Thornberrys Survival Guide will run through June on 13 million cans including three million cans of special Wild Thornberrys Pasta. Consumers receive the book by mailing in two UPCs. FSIs support.
