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Kiran Aditham
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Kiran Aditham is a Business Management grad from the University of Central Florida, Aditham earned his stripes as a freelance writer in music/arts publishing.

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Make a Wish, Win a Million Thanks to Choice Hotels

Written on
July 7th 2006
Author
by Kiran Aditham  |
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Wishing wells have been realized in many forms since the days of nursery rhymes, from the blue-green pool at the mega-malls to the Treves Fountain in Italy. But rarely, or never, have I seen an interactive fountain which allows you to throw your virtual pennies with the hopes of your wildest dreams coming true.

But thanks to Choice Hotels’ Digital Wishing Well—the online component of its “Key to a Million Sweepstakes” promotion for the Econo Lodge and Rodeway Inn brands—online visitors are afforded the opportunity to wish for and win of life’s obvious wants—money. The Well, which will stay open through August 18, gives one winner a chance at $50,000. Even better, the lucky dreamer receives one of 20 “room keys”, one of which will open the door to a $1,000,000 prize.

“These days, $1 million isn’t a whole lot, with all these $40 million jackpots making the news,” admits, Tom Ajello, VP & Creative Director for Agency.com, the firm behind the online creative. “We felt we had to give it a little more oomph, and make an interactive experience around it.”

What kind of oomph, you ask? Within Flash-enabled advertising units (above) on third-party sites (including TripAdvisor, Weather.com, CNN Money) asking the question, “What would you do with a million dollars?”, Web surfers can submit wishes by dropping a virtual coin directly into a slot. But the key is the user-friendly portion equation is the real-time aspect, whereby once a user drops the coin, their wish can be seen along with others’ entries by scrolling over the wishes—also, appropriately, in the shape of coins.

According to Ajello, the essence of this wishing well is the user-generated aspect it provokes, in turn keeping the promotion going in terms of traffic-building, as well as brand awareness. “I’m into allowing the user to control the ad, and then it sort of optimizes itself,” he says. “One person signs one ad, and the next time it’s served, you can see what they wrote in it, Every ad is fed from the data source. Same way you manage a website, it’s the same strategy. All the ads are alive. The second you submit your wish, that wish is saved. It’s simply written to the text files, and then it’s live there so the rest of the world can see.”

As a note, the Digital Wishing Well recurs on the contest landing page beyond the ad units. On the landing page, users can not only enter the sweepstakes and see other entrants’ wishes, the sites’ viral component lets them send the contest link directly to their friends. Additionally, an SEM campaign is rolling out, which will be complementing standard search terms with unique keywords reflective of the grand prize: “key to a million” and “one million dollars.”

While the main objective of Choice’s marketing effort is to entice registration at their respective hotels, Ajello & Co. has definitely taken the interactive portion seriously—especially the user-engagement factor.

“We’re connecting people together, and it keeps the ad evergreen,” Ajello adds. “People do want to express themselves, and it all ties into heartstrings.”

Warm wishes, warmed cockles, and a million bucks…consider the heartstrings tugged.



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