This World’s For You
Bud World’s comin’ at ya. St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch learned a few lessons from its Budweiser Beer School and created Bud World, a mobile program that takes the brand’s touring activities to a new level by combining education and entertainment in a consumer program.
The mobile exhibit, which debuted outside Super Bowl XXXIV in Atlanta in January, features a BudVision Theater where guests settle down in stadium-style seating for a World of Budweiser show in high-definition video and Dolby Surround Sound audio. The program includes a brief history of Anheuser-Busch.
>From the theater, guests move on to the Bud Brew House, where the brand’s >brewmasters hold court and visitors can touch, smell, and taste the >various components that go into suds-making. Each area holds 40-odd >people. Total trip time is about 35 minutes.
“BudVision really is the highlight of Bud World in terms of both content and technology,” says Mark Greenspahn, manager of special event marketing for A-B. “The high-definition video format gives visitors a sensory experience unlike anything they’ve felt before,” Greenspahn says.
Bud World is comprised of two 53-foot-long trailers and one 37-foot-long trailer that unfold to become a 2,000-square-foot exhibit. Two Bud World tours hit the road in January to complement the pair of Budweiser Beer Schools, which have provided seminars for retailers and wholesalers at A-B’s 12 domestic breweries since 1996.
“There is an unprecedented demand for Bud World,” says Greenspahn, noting that the tour is currently planning its schedule four months ahead.
Teens will have a chance to compete at the Sydney Olympics through an essay contest launched by Adidas, Beaverton, OR, and the U.S. Track and Field organization. In the Forever Sport Challenge, which runs through May 5, Adidas is soliciting 500-to-750-word essays on the topic, “What makes an athlete an Olympian?” from teens born between Oct. 1, 1985 and Aug. 31, 1987.
A national judging panel will select the top 16 essays (eight boys and eight girls). The finalists will be flown to the U. S. Olympic Trials in Sacramento in July to participate in five athletic competitions. The top two boys and girls earn a spot on the U.S. “team,” which will travel to Australia to compete in the Adidas Forever Sport Challenge against teens from 12 other countries. While in Australia, winners will tour Sydney and the Olympic Stadium, attend a few Olympic events, and meet some athletes. They’ll also participate in a one-day competition featuring five events (100-meter run, 800-meter run, hurdles, long jump, and shot put).
The contest is being promoted in schools around the eight stops along the Golden Spike Tour, USA Track & Field’s competition circuit, and on adidas.com/challenge.
Athletic apparel maker Adidas is the official outfitter of the 2000 and 2004 U.S. Olympic Teams. The company will supply products for 26 of the 28 medal sports at the Sydney games.
Nabisco, East Hanover, NJ, put its stamp of approval, so to speak, on last year’s Don’t Eat the Winning Oreo effort by reprising the contest in even bigger fashion. More than 1.5 million specially imprinted Oreos were distributed randomly through packages of Oreo and Oreo Double Stuf in an effort that started Jan. 17 and continued through February.
One grand-prize winner chose from a family-of-four trip to either championship football and baseball games, Hawaii and Alaska, or Hollywood and New York City. Five first-place cookies provided 2000 Volkswagen Beetles filled with Oreos; 1,000 second-place prizes offered $100 cash and cookies; and more than one million cookies were good for Oreo-logoed yo-yos.
Packages containing the grand, first-place, and second-place prizes contained certificates verifying the winning cookie, so consumers didn’t really have to worry about eating it.
Last year’s grand prize of a Beetle stuffed with Oreos was won by Caitlin Hedberg, now 12 years old.
Warner Bros. Home Video has lined up yet another impressive list of tie-in partners for the March 21 home video release of Pokemon: The First Movie.
Partners Heinz, Clorox, and Zenith are running print advertising and contributing to an in-pack program offering rebates and product discounts. Pokemon’s parent, Nintendo, is also in-pack and throws a $3 video rebate offer into one million packages of its Pokemon Stadium videogame. Kraft Foods dangles a $3 rebate on packs of Kraft Singles and ups the ante with TV spots.
Warner itself is inserting five Golden Tickets into videos that send winners and a guardian to Japan for a meeting with Pokemon creator Mr. Ishihara, a $1,000 shopping spree at The Pokemon Center, and other prizes. It’s also teaming with future sister America Online to find a six- to 13-year-old to help it build an official video Web site. The winner, to be selected from submitted 50-word essays, gets to spend a weekend helping design the site and additional prizes.
And yes, Burger King is taking another run at a premium giveaway, despite the alleged infant deaths caused by the containers that held its premiums last fall (January promo). The tragedies tainted an otherwise wildly successful tie-in.
We promise, this is the last Pokemon story we’ll run (at least until the next movie comes out this summer).
Goodmark Foods, Raleigh, NC, in January broke The Full Labonte, a sweepstakes featuring NASCAR drivers Bobby, Terry, and Justin Labonte, the team sponsored by Goodmark’s Slim Jim brand. Fans call a toll-free number to enter for a shot at a grand-prize “Full Labonte” trip for four to the Busch Grand National Series race in October, a tour of the Labonte Race Shop, dinner, cash, and two cases of Slim Jim. First-prize winners (250 of them) get a team hat; 750 second-placers get a die-cast collectable car. P-O-P displays and slimjim. com support.
Novartis Consumer Health, Summit, NJ, kicked off a co-marketing agreement with Bally Total Fitness by marketing Lamisil AT athlete’s foot medication in 350 Bally fitness centers across the U.S. Novartis pays a promotional fee to get signage and distribution in Bally’s 225 stores in clubs, and may host events at Bally and distribute Bally guest passes via retail promos.
The pharmaceuticals company plans to market other products through Bally, whose other promo partners include Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Time Warner, MBNA America, and Sunkist. Chicago-based Bally has four million members in the U.S. and Canada.
Hasbro, Pawtucket, RI, took a page from Binney & Smith in a six-month promo for Play-Doh modeling clay. Colorful Campaign 2000 asks kids to vote for their favorite Play-Doh color, with the top four vote-getters appearing in a special four-pack this summer. A p.r. event in Concord, NH, kicked off the campaign in January. Kids vote via hasbro.com or mail. Fleishman-Hillard, New York City, handles.
Binney & Smith won accolades in the early `90s for Crayola crayon campaigns that let kids vote for their favorite colors and suggest names for new colors. Winners got their colors included in packs of crayons and won other prizes, and Binney & Smith hosted parades and other events in its hometown of Easton, PA.
The U.S. Mint will spend $40 million promoting the new Sacagawea gold one-dollar coin in a TV, radio, and print campaign this spring – trying to avoid the debacle it had with the Susan B. Anthony dollar, which customers started treating like a bad penny after often confusing it with a quarter.
Until the effort starts, General Mills – which offered the coins through a cereal in-pack effort (February promo) – isn’t the only one helping the Mint gain desperately needed exposure. Since January, cashiers at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club stores have been making change with the Sacagawea coin instead of dollar bills. “Through the end of February, we will be the exclusive holder. We’re giving it back automatically to customers unless they request dollar bills,” says Wal-Mart Stores spokeswoman Laura Pope. Customers also can request the coin as change without buying anything.
We wish we had a visual: Allegro Resorts invited wishful travelers to strip down to their bathing suits for a chance at a free trip to the Caribbean locale of Turks & Caicos. In Fly For Free In Your Bathing Suit, folks were asked to arrive at JFK Airport Terminal 5 on February 5 at 9:30 a.m. clad only in their swim togs. Ten couples were to be chosen at random from among the skimpily clad contestants for an all-expenses-paid, eight-day trip for two to the islands on TWA (total value $3,800). The effort by Allegro, which operates more than 30 properties in Central America, the Caribbean, and Africa, coincided with TWA’s launch of its first non-stop flight from JFK to the island.
GovWorks.com, which links citizens with government agencies, hit the campaign trail in January with a tour that will parallel events in the election cycle. “For a business that is almost exclusively virtual, it is important for us to have a physical presence,” says govWorks.com vp-marketing David Camp.
The New York City-based for-profit enterprise helps citizens learn about government services and pay bills online, and is making alliances with local municipalities to offer constituents Internet solutions.
Launched at the Iowa political caucuses in January, govWorks.com’s national Listening and Learning Tour dramatizes the site’s role as a bridge between citizens and government, and will hit political venues such as the Republican and Democratic national conventions, governors’ meetings, and candidate debates.
The tour’s 38-foot, gooseneck trailer features a four-foot plasma-screen video wall plus seven kiosks with computers, allowing visitors access to govWorks.com. “We’re providing real-time, two-way interactive communications through satellite links,” says Brad Bryen, executive vp at New York City-based U.S. Concepts, which handles. An ad campaign from Fallon McElligot, Minneapolis, kicks off later this year, says Camp.
“GovWorks.com is a very powerful public sector portal and transaction engine. Our expectations for site traffic are very aggressive,” Camp adds.
