This year the corporate sponsors have been getting some harsh criticism from international human rights activists that say that their involvement basically endorses China’s human rights record. However, Worldwide Olympic Game sponsors such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Kodak and Visa are all back at it this year. Chinese regulators have put limits on the amount of exposure non-Olympic Sponsors can receive through state-run TV during the Olympics and on outdoor billboards – though the opening ceremony of this year’s Games is expected to be the first sporting event to every draw more than 1 billion TV viewers.

Here’s what a few of the top U.S. brand sponsors are doing this year.

Kodak Embraces Social Media and Web 2.0

Following this year’s closing ceremonies Kodak unfortunately will conclude it’s sponsorship as the Worldwide Official Imaging Sponsor which has been a sponsor for the past 100+ years. The announcement made earlier this year brought back memories for me of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games in which I got heavily involved in creating and executing promotions for Kodak. It was then that I realized what a huge marketing event the Olympic Games are.

During that year Kodak not only promoted their worldwide sponsorship, but also supported the individual sports, national governing bodies (NGB’s). The strategy was to assign an individual sport to a specific retailer and develop exclusive promotions for them. I was leading the agency team at the time working with Kodak on this program which resulted in 73 different account-specific promotional campaigns for about 33 different retailers that included Wal-Mart, Kmart, Target, Walgreen’s, Wegmans, Kroger, Safeway, Eckerd Drug and Revco. Many of these included sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip to attend the Games.

I learned an extraordinary amount that year about working with the Olympic Committee and the NGB’s as well as the differences and individual needs of these retailers. All those promotions were communicated mostly through in-store merchandising and some with additional retail newspaper advertising. Nothing existed online at all and that was just 12 years ago. Think about how different it is today: not only have advertising and promotions moved online, but the coverage of the games has as well.

Kodak has been one of big brands setting the gold standard in the new world of social media and Web 2.0. This year they’ve sent Jenny Cisney, Kodak’s “Chief Blogger” to Beijing who is sharing with us the fan experience, as well as the sights and sounds, culture, etc. from the Games through Kodak’s blog, www.1000Words.com. Kodak also sent Richard Mackson, a professional photographer who is posting photos from the games, and Tom Hoehn who is reporting on how Kodak products are supporting the Games. Hopefully all their reports will make it to us and won’t get blocked by the restrictions that the Chinese Government has placed on Internet access.

Before Tom left for China he stated, “I am personally looking forward to these Games. This will be my fifth and Jenny’s first. I think the mix of perspectives will provide for some interesting posts. These Games will be like none other in history and we hope to share a Kodak perspective which will of course include tons of great pictures.”

It’s really bittersweet watching these games and knowing that it’s Kodak’s last year covering them as an official sponsor. I just hope the images of the Games will continue to be chronicled in the same high quality, professional way that Kodak has done for the past 100 years.

NBC Universal Cross-Promotes Games and The Mummy

NBC Universal created a marketing first this year with an integrated campaign that promotes both the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games along with a major summer theatrical movie release.

NBC, “America’s Olympic Network,” which owns the exclusive U.S. media rights to the Olympic Games through 2012, and Universal Studios, part of NBC Universal and the studio behind “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” has developed what it calls it’s “most comprehensive synergistic effort ever” to promote these two August events.

NBC first launched this combo campaign back on July 1st with an innovative co-branded TV spot in which they utilized top assets from both their TV and movie studio side. The piece features settings and characters from “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” along with Olympic athletes that are seamlessly blended in sequences in which the action from the film transforms into Olympic events. (The connection of course is that most of the action in The Mummy takes place in China and the Beijing Olympic Games are also in China).

The TV spots will continue through the end of August. “The Mummy” hit theaters on Aug. 1. On July 18th, an extended 2:30-minute preview started running in NCM theaters nationwide which is also being featured on in-park screens and Astrovisions at both Universal Studios Hollywood and Universal Studios, on screens in 235 college campuses, at the NBC Experience Store at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, on NBC Wireless Networks’ NBCNews2Go, NBC.com, NBCOlympics.com and other NBC Web sites and in over 4,700 New York taxis through the NY10 Taxi Entertainment Network.

The extended version can be viewed on YouTube. Check it out, it’s pretty cool. This year NBC is scheduled to carry an unprecedented 2,200 hours of coverage streamed live online at NBCOlympics.com.

Coca-Cola’s Integrated Campaign Targets the Chinese

Coca-Cola is again a top sponsor of the Olympic Games and the longest-running corporate supporter going back to 1928 (Eastman Kodak would have been but they missed one year). They’ve created a series of new Olympic advertising, marketing, promotions and interactive activities that center around the theme of unity, cultural connections, and the celebration of Olympic Spirit worldwide.

The Coca-Cola China Olympic programs use the Mandarin expression “Shuang,” which means complete physical, emotional and spiritual refreshment, to describe the tremendous passion, pride and excitement felt by all Chinese as hosts of the 2008 Olympic Games.

“The common theme in all these Coca-Cola initiatives is to celebrate the global connections and magic that occurs when the world comes together in friendship at the Olympic Games this summer here in China.” said Kevin Tressler, Director, Worldwide Sports and Entertainment Marketing for Coca-Cola.

Three new TV commercials have launched in China around the games. One is titled “Shuang City” which transforms Beijing into an Olympic playground, featuring Olympic basketball athlete Yao Ming. You can see the ad here on YouTube as well as a behind-the-scenes look at its making along with the other two TV ads, “Bird’s Nest” and “Yao and LeBro.

Three Global and local China brand promotions and contests have also been launched:

• WE8: A unique global program, which unites eight Chinese artists with eight progressive musicians from around the world to interpret the ideas and passions that connect people, creating a series of Coca-Cola contour bottle designs and music tracks.
• Win a Dream Day With the Star Team: A promotional contest that invites Chinese consumers to go online and enter unique codes from Coca-Cola products. Several lucky consumers will win the opportunity to spend the day with the Coca-Cola Olympic Star Team that includes athletes Liu Xiang, Guo Jing Jing, Zhao Rui Rui and Wang Li Qin.
• Delicious Happiness is what the Chinese characters of Coca-Cola literally translate to. More than 150 countries have launched special Coca-Cola packs with the Chinese characters logo during the Games.

For the first time in the U.S., the cans, bottles and packages are featuring the Coca-Cola script in different languages with 14 unique designs. Languages for the cans and fridge packs include Ethiopian, Russian, Thai and Mandarin. New can designs are appearing every two to three weeks. Coke’s 20-ounce plastic bottles feature labels with languages from Bangladesh, China, Egypt, Georgia, Israel, Korea, Nepal and Sri Lanka and also have English versions.

In addition, Coke is featuring a “six pack” of athletes, including swimmer Natalie Coughlin and basketball star LeBron James, on packaging and in advertising.

Three new interactive programs are being launched or expanded off of iCoke.cn:

• Coca-Cola Virtual Olympic Torch Relay: In partnership with Tencent’s QQ instant messaging service, a Virtual Torch Relay taking place online across China which had 57 million participants back on July 7th.
• Coca-Cola Olympic Photo Montage: A collaborative photo experience where more than 17 million photos that has been contributed by Chinese consumers to make the largest Olympic photo in history.
• Design the World, a Coke Interactive Tool: Allows consumers to design their own bottle online and then combine their creation with the designs of other consumers from around the world. Last look I took there were 57,808 bottles designed worldwide, 4,905 submitted by the U.S. with Korea way in the country lead with over 23,000.

Three Beijing “Shuang” venues are opening during the Games to welcome consumers from China and abroad:

• The Shuang Experience Center at the Olympic Green features interactive exhibits, games, contests and other opportunities to participate in the Olympics for visitors at the Olympic Green.
• Two Shuang Zones at The Place and at Chao Yang Park feature interactive exhibits, music, Olympic pin trading, an opportunity to be photographed holding a real Olympic Torch and a daily “Golden Moments” party at 8:08 p.m. at The Place where medal-winning athletes, celebrities and consumers come together to celebrate the day’s events and cheer for the China team.

David Brooks, VP, Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Project Group of Coca-Cola (China) said “Shuang City is the crowning glory of Coca-Cola’s Olympic journey in 2008. Our goal has always been to bring the unity and passion of the Games to the people of China and the world.”

McDonald’s Uses Olympic Sponsorship to Build Worldwide Brand

McDonald’s has been a partner of the Games for 40 years and as the Official Restaurant of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing they are in charge of feeding the athletes. McDonald’s Ex VP and Global Chief Marketing Officer is Mary Dillon leads the company’s worldwide marketing efforts and global brand strategy across 118 countries. Mary has spearheaded McDonald’s biggest Olympic sponsorship to date which includes everything from new menu items, interactive promotions that include a new employee video contest, a youth well-being program and a global online game.

The McDonald’s Olympic Champion Crew program is a longstanding McDonald’s Olympic tradition that recognizes and rewards its top restaurant employees.

• 1,400 of McDonald’s employees from around the world are in Beijing to serve both the athletes and spectators at McDonald’s four new Olympic venue restaurants.
• To celebrate their skills and the Olympic ideals of teamwork and excellence they’re hosting a Big Mac Building competition during a press event on August 7.
• These McDonald’s restaurant all-stars are also competing to assemble the highest quality Big Mac sandwiches. This year to tie in with the user-generated video contest trend, the Olympic Spirit of McDonald’s Video Contest invited the

Crew to create a short video that tells their own story and experience and expresses their Olympic spirit. The finalists’ videos are posted on McDonald’s Web site where the public is invited to vote for their favorites. Of the 22 finalists, only one is from the USA. The winning videos will receive medals and up to $2,500.

Mary’s other accomplishments include the formation of the company’s first Global Moms Advisory Panel and innovation in the area of children’s well-being.

The McDonald’s Champion Kids program is part of this commitment which engages young people in worldwide in activities that focus on body, mind and spirit.

More than 200 kids from 40 countries are in Beijing for an opportunity to experience the Games, meet athletes, visit the Olympic Village and see the wonders of China.

• Countries determined their participant selection process through a combination of physical, mental and verbal skills activities.
• Many of the kids will also act as youth correspondents reporting their stories and experiences back to their hometown media outlets.

McDonald’s earlier this year launched a global alternate reality game called The Lost Ring in collaboration with world-renowned game designer Jane McGonigal, interactive marketer AKQA and the International Olympic Committee. In it players work online and offline to find 27 artifacts hidden all over the world and solve the mystery. I originally wrote about the game on my blog, Donna’s Promo Talk, back in April after I heard USA CMO, Neil Golden, talk about McDonald’s promotional marketing programs. The game now includes a new blogger, Track and Field Olympic Gold Medalist Edwin Moses. McDonald’s will make a $100,000 donation to Ronald McDonald House Charities Earthquake Relief in China.

On Aug. 2, McDonald’s launched a new Web site in the U.S., FacetheGlory.com, where it is playing up its Southern Style Chicken Sandwich with Olympic newcomer BMX athlete Donnie Robinson. The company is featuring Robinson on the site to highlight the sport’s entrance at the Games this year. A viral marketing component is included where visitors are able to superimpose athletes’ pictures and send them virally on to friends.

So remember: support all the brands that sponsor this year’s Beijing Summer Olympic Games – not just your favorite team. These brands pay a huge price to be official sponsors and without their support these games could not take place.

The report also states that online display ads (Web page banners, pop-ups, etc.) have lost their luster and that spending on them has been generally flat for the past two years. They believe it will peak this year at $12.6 billion, and then begin a precipitous decline to less than half that amount over the next four years. They also state that paid search advertising is likewise facing a luster-loss and they foresee it hitting its peak next year at $16.9 billion, followed by a gradual decline.

Currently, online promotion spending is only 22% of the total $37 billion overall interactive marketing pie. Overall, promotions account for about 60% of all dollars spent annually in global marketing. The Borrell report says that the composition that makes up online promotions spending will continue to evolve over the next five years. Spending for online discounts and rebates (for example, the reduced ticket prices offered by some airlines) will continue to dominate the category, however, it will decrease in share going from 41.4% in 2007 to 38.7% by 2012. Spending on online games and contests however is predicated to grow from 10.5% of the online promotions pie in 2007 to 28.4% by 2012.

To many of us in the interactive promotions business this is great news. We now have a report that helps to confirm what we’ve known all along … online promotions, specifically sweepstakes, contests and instant-win games, produce highly measurable results. By putting the right incentive in front of the right audience, you can get them to act! So while this report may contain predictions that seem strange to some, it makes perfect sense to us promotions people. We all know that marketers today need campaigns that can provide measurable results, and online promotions are an effective way for them to achieve this.

An interactive “chance to win” promotion consists of either a random-draw sweepstakes or a contest in which the winner must provide a degree of individual skill or uniqueness (i.e. writing a song, creating a video, uploading a photograph, composing a themed essay, whipping up a creative new recipe or showcasing some degree of talent).

When considering whether to do a sweepstakes or a contest promotion it’s important to keep in mind that contests are often used to help reinforce the brand or product/service attributes along with their positioning in the marketplace. Many brand owners today prefer contests because they often can require a purchase. This enables brand owners to create a database of confirmed users, unlike sweepstakes in which “No Purchase Necessary” is a standard mandate. However, a contest does require more work then a random-draw sweepstakes, since all entries must be judged or evaluated.

What I believe is an up-and-coming trend which will help fuel the growth of online sweepstakes and contest promotions is integrating them with social media. The strategy of combining these two marketing tactics is bound to become a big part of the increase that is predicted over the next five years.

Social media, including blogs and social networks, has dramatically increased the speed and coverage of word-of-mouth, also known as viral marketing. Blogs are powerful socializing tools that connect people from all over the world and build relationships, therefore can easily get the message out about a promotion. Bloggers like giveaways and contests and integrating a chance to win promotion into their blog provides added value and excitement to their readers. Bloggers and social networks also help to spread the word quickly about an online promotion that a marketer may currently be conducting. To help get key bloggers involved with a contest promotion, marketers might want to consider inviting a few to be on their panel of judges

A survey from BIGResearch, cited in the Borrell report showed that 38% of people that were online were also watching television; more than 20% were listening to radio; 9.5% were reading a newspaper and almost 7% were reading a magazine. The local medium best positioned to take advantage of the trend could be local TV.

“Online contests, giveaways, coupons and sales of half-price gift certificates are proliferating, many of them bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars annually and generating warm partnerships between the media company and the advertiser,” the Borrell report stated. “The utility of the Internet holds fascinating possibilities for local businesses. Local media companies that are genuinely helping those businesses grow, rather than merely selling advertising to them, are well positioned to succeed in this brave new world of marketing.”

The expansion of Internet marketing has created a strong need for local media companies to recreate themselves. They now have an opportunity to become more of a marketing partner to local businesses and those that can quickly make the shift and begin collaborations with them may see big rewards. They could even threaten some of the traditional ad agencies that work with local businesses.

The report goes on to suggest that the local media companies can capitalize on this trend by focusing on creating “promotions” for their advertisers. This may include establishing a special promotions team to develop promotional campaigns that will deliver measurable results for advertisers. These campaigns can include quarterly contests and give-always, weekly or monthly half-price gift certi¬ficate sales, “best-in-town” online voting campaigns for restaurants, dentists, ice cream parlors, golf courses, etc. Holidays and sporting events (College Bowl, Super Bowl, NCAA Tournament games, etc.) are all prime promotion periods.

An example of a local promotion cited in the report was created by WAVE-TV in Louisville, KY. The “Win, Place, Show” promotion was a contest tie-in with the Kentucky Derby sponsored by the Kentucky Lottery. Contestants were invited to choose their three favorites in order for the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes. The person with the highest number of points – awarded for each correct choice – won a color television.

The Louisville Zoo, another WAVE-TV advertiser, had been running a discount season pass promotion for the past six years. Its most recent promotion was a “Name the Baby” contest in which visitors to the site could enter suggestions for the zoo’s baby elephant and other baby animals. Both this promotion and the Kentucky Derby contest drove people to WAVE3.com to participate.

Another example was a contest run by WKRN-TV in Nashville, TN, in which they promoted a tie-in to the 2007 College Bowl games. The goal of “College Bowl Frenzy” was to increase page views and unique visitors for WKRN and to offer some fun interactivity for their viewers. Jamie Camp, Internet sales manager for WKRN said that the contest “puts us in touch with participants at a more personal level.” With more than 32 College Bowl games last year it was a great fit for them. The contest got about 1,000 participants, offering WKRN the chance to gain new insights into their audience.

WKRN offered their sponsor advertisers 15-second video spots on the site before the news and weather clips. Advertisers included KFC and RJ Young who were able to choose among three different level packages. These sponsors had online tile ads and displays on the College Bowl Frenzy pages. All the sponsors had the opportunity to create a sign-up survey to collect user information. They were also able to offer giveaways of their own. Since implementing contests, WKRN’s Web site traffic has quadrupled.

Local newspaper Web sites are also offering opportunities to advertisers looking for an online presence without buying standard online advertising. Buffalo.com, owned by The Buffalo News, has been running contests for advertisers since the site launched in 1999, but rather than use contests as a way for advertisers to gain sales leads, Buffalo.com offers them more as an incentive program for advertisers that place ads in The Buffalo News, and as tie-ins to events such as movie premieres.

One promotion it created was an interactive game for Basil Cars called “Hidden Treasures.” Participants could look for Basil Treasure coins in the Basil ads running in the Buffalo News and also on Basilcars.com. When they collected all six coins they could then attach them to a game board and mail them in for a chance to win a two-year lease on a car or $7,000 in Basil Bucks.

What this report is basically saying is that we need to take a look backwards at some of the basic principals of marketing that have worked for years offline (nationally and locally) and effectively make them work online. The report states three main drivers behind what they believe is the cause for the big shift to online promotions from traditional advertising.

1. Advertisers are demanding larger and more measurable returns from their marketing investments. New technologies are increasing marketers’ targeting and tracking capabilities as well as their expectations. Even within online advertising there is demand for more targeting, more measurement, and better ROI.

2. The Internet is better suited for research and fulfillment than for conveying emotion and excitement for a product. While the Internet does contribute to brand and product awareness, its uniqueness is that it’s interactive, which makes it a perfect media for promotions.

3. Online promotions are primed to closely mirror their offline counterparts. The ratio of non-ad spending to ad spending for total marketing expenditures (local and national) is 60:40. For online marketing, the ratio is 22:78. The online spending ration is out of synch because the Internet is still a relatively new medium and businesses are still experimenting with its marketing capabilities.

So while we all don’t have crystal balls that can look five years into the future, we can always look backwards. It’s an exciting time to be in the interactive, online promotions business and I’m looking forward to the next five years.

This past year PMA decided to revamp its image a bit: it went through a strategic branding initiative that resulted in a new logo and name. The association is no longer just focused on promotional marketing, but instead is championing the understanding and meaning of integrated marketing which they define as the integration of all disciplines in the marketing mix to deliver one unified message to the consumer. At this year’s conference they incorporated their new identity and new name for the first time.

PMA’s theme for this year’s event was “Accountability in Action”. At first I thought the theme was a bit narrow and worried that we were going to be presented with reams of statistics and analytics. Luckily, the majority of the speakers did a fantastic job of incorporating the theme into colorful, interactive presentations. Measurement and a positive ROI have been important challenges that every marketer has been responsible for, and since everyone is now being held to accountability in a more direct way, presenters had a lot to talk about.

We had the great privilege of having Carly Fiorina, former CEO of Hewlett-Packard, as our keynote speaker who kicked off day two (April 9) of the conference. Carly defined integrated marketing as “The collection of every impression that the customer has about a company.” She also said that “companies can’t always control with their marketing what the customer takes away about the company. We’re in a period of extraordinary change in our business today and we all know that change is difficult.”

Carly shared a great quote about change: “Change is like heaven … everyone wants to go there but nobody wants to die.”

Here are some of Carly’s key take-aways for us marketers:

1. Authenticity – if your marketing is not accurate and true, it just won’t work.
2. Judgment – the ability to know when to act and when to pause. We need to make quick decisions; however, there are always those times when the data is saying one thing and you just know it is wrong. That’s the time you should pause and reflect.
3. Perspective – this is what really matters … remember that you can use information to prove just about anything.

Coca-Cola and OfficeMax spoke on the first day of the conference about the Changing Tolerance of Risk. Beatriz Perez, SVP of Integrated Marketing for Coke, reminded us of the biggest marketing failure story in history … their introduction of New Coke. Here was a perfect example of when Coke should have probably followed their better judgment and paused for a while. As Steven Levitt, author of “Freakonomics,” told us in his keynote presentation on day one of the conference, “a lot of major companies make critical decisions based on what their customers tell them vs. what they actually do.”

Coke did highlight some examples of successful risk taking that they’ve achieved. At first they were very skeptical but finally did decide to embrace the EepyBird Experiment that turned 200 Diet Coke bottles into a huge fountain display when combined with 500 Mentos mints. This was an extremely popular video on YouTube and resulted in a host of copy-cats.

So, instead of Coke trying to make it go away, they invited both their employees and consumers to create their own versions of the experiment and submit them online. They even brought the two partners who created the original video experiment to Coca-Cola’s headquarters to perform the experiment for their employees.

OfficeMax’s SVP of Marketing/Advertising, Bob Thacker, told us their goal is to first make friends and then have them become part of the brand. His belief is that companies need to take risks however they need to have patience and may not always see an immediate ROI. The hugely popular Elf Yourself viral marketing campaign is a great example of taking risks. OfficeMax took their entire holiday marketing budget and decided to move it online with a strategy to create a gift that everyone could enjoy. The holiday season isn’t the biggest selling time of year in their category; back-to-school is king. So, the risk was a little less, but still this was a pretty bold move.

The OfficeMax Elf Yourself program was one of about a dozen different online games that they created that first year in 2006 and wasn’t the most expensive. It was however the one that really hit big with consumers as well as the media and went on to become the largest viral campaign ever. They had originally hoped to reach 100,000 million visitors and ended up with over 193 million! Bob also shared with us that 47% of those surveyed did connect the OfficeMax brand with the elves and that 33% actually bought product at OfficeMax.

Target gave us a really great presentation from Sally Mueller, Director of Marketing Planning, that was highly entertaining a welcome right before lunch. She took us through the story of the iconic Target brand set to a backdrop of visuals showcasing Target’s great design and music selections. Target has become a “marketer’s brand” and one that we use as a role model in our business to showcase how to successfully build a brand and differentiate yourself. Sally shared with us a wide assortment of marketing initiatives however I did take notice that they have not embraced social media yet into their mix.

Target has been very protective of their brand, especially in-store, and they even use the phrase “we police our brand.” During the Q&A period the topic came up about the disgruntled blogger who contacted Target about an ad in Times Square that she found offensive and was told that Target doesn’t recognize blogs as media and their policy therefore is to not to speak with them. This incidence, however accurate or not, has gotten the blogosphere in quite an uproar.

Now I’m a consumer and a marketer who has been an advocate of the Target brand. However, I’m also a blogger and this has truly left a negative impression of the brand with me. When asked how Target plans to work with bloggers and social media now based on this incident Sally could only say is that they are learning from their mistakes. I really hope that Target realizes that they do need to start loosening their control somewhat in this world of “my media” where any individual can make a huge difference. It would be a shame to see such a great brand hurt by not evolving with the “Sign of the Times”.

We also got to hear Neil Golden, CMO of McDonald’s USA, review with us their strategy of concentrating on their menu and creating products based on customer’s need into what he called “the strongest turnaround in business history.”

Mike McCarley, VP Marketing for NBC Sports told us how in just two years they created “Sunday Night is Football Night” and turned NFL Sunday Night Football into a more popular experience than the traditional Monday night.

Ann Hood, former SVP Global Brand Marketing and Innovation for BP shared with us a really great story of how this brand made an emotional connection with its customers on a global level by fulfilling its promise to make things “a little better” for them.

Each one of these session could be an article of its own. So, the conference co-chairs reviewed with us at the end what they thought were the top take-aways of the conference. Here’s what they said:

1. It’s all about the customer
2. Be authentic to your brand
3. Great brands need to take risks
4. People in this industry have a true passion for what they do
5. A unique value was gained by this year’s accountability theme

The conference then wrapped up on Wednesday night with the 25th Annual REGGIE live Awards Ceremony that featured 25 years of the best promotion and integrated marketing campaigns. 7-Eleven along with their agency, Fresh Works, took home the coveted Supper Reggie award this year for their Simpson’s Kwik E-Mart campaign. Rita Bargerhuff, VP of Marketing for 7-Eleven spoke about this campaign during the conference session the day before on entertainment marketing.

The Simpsons Movie was a hit when released in theaters this past summer and with it came a slew of marketing partners. 7-Eleven and FreshWorks worked with Fox Studios and Gracie Films to convert 12 stores into Kwik-E-Marts (the fictional convenience store from “The Simpsons”). The Slurpee® beverage was temporarily changed to “Squishee,” and new Sprinklicious™ Donuts filled bakery cases. Manufacturing partners were enlisted to create products like Buzz cola, KrustyO’s brand cereal and Radioactive Man comic books (Issue No. 711). Consumers were finally able to live like a Simpson at 7-Eleven.

Gold, Silver and Bronze REGGIE Award-winning campaigns were also announced in 16 categories. Other multi-REGGIE Award-winning campaigns included: The Sopranos A&E Connection; McDonald’s Shrek, SPIDER-MAN WEEK IN NYC; and My GRAMMY Moment.

“Each year, the PMA REGGIE Awards honors some of the most creative, well-executed, results-driven integrated marketing campaigns,” said Bonnie Carlson, president of the PMA. “FreshWorks and 7-Eleven delivered the largest-scale promotion to hit the convenience retail channel, and the first ever, real life Simpsons experience.”

Thanks to Bonnie, the PMA staff, all the speakers and the many attendees that I had the chance to see again as well as meet for the first time. We all walk away from these events truly inspired by each other and then have to go back to our individual offices and computers. The challenge is now to incorporate what we learned from our peers into what we do every day.

SES New York is the largest show in the SES global series and is a must-attend event for marketers looking to gain insights and knowledge from experts in the Internet and search industry. More than 60 sessions were offered across a wide variety of topics and experience levels – it kicked off with search fundamentals and then also included specialized tracks such as social search, local, advertising, multimedia and contextual ads. Some of the topics were on the agenda last year and it was noted that there will most likely be new ones next year that aren’t on our radar yet. The Expo Hall officially opened on Tuesday morning which included more than 135 sponsors and exhibitors that we could chat with as well.

Since I joined the SESers on Tuesday, I’m sorry to say that I missed the SES/St. Patty’s Day pub crawl Monday night that took folks bar-hoping to seven different pubs. I flew into JFK Tuesday morning and made it to the Hilton before the 9 a.m. conference welcome and opening keynote from Nick Carr, author of The Big Switch: Rewiring the World from Edison to Google. Kevin Ryan, our host from SES for the event, introduced Nick and informed us that his book had just made no. five on the New York Times Best Seller list. Nick is also the former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review and writes and speaks on technology, business and culture.

Nick and Kevin both acknowledged the previous evening’s festivities and the early start time but everyone managed to shake off their residual exhaustion, perk up and dive into Nick’s topic. Nick said the industry is at a major turning point right now as far as how we use computers goes. His thesis was that economics, not technology, actually determines the way companies behave and how we operate. Nick gave attendees a sweeping overview of our society’s use of power from the first water wheel in the late 1800s to the utility companies that soon sprang up to supply 80% of our power.

The change we are currently experiencing today in the universe of computers is in deploying computing centrally, which is very similar to how utility companies eventually garnered and distributed power. This “cloud utility computing” model is not a new topic, but suddenly something that is seen as an inevitability. Nick’s talk gave me a much better understanding of the topic including “virtualization,” which is basically turning physical computing into software. Today the computer grid itself is now finally at the point that it’s catching up with computers.

In other words, a computer revolution is at our doorsteps. The major benefit to companies will be economies of scale in which they will no longer have to run and manage their own IT systems. However, it also means these companies will not need to employ as many people. The other growing trend today is user-generated content that companies can also tap into instead of developing their own content. On top of the fact that we are getting accustomed to having more and more highly personalized content served up to us which is based on our past behaviors. So, Nick asks, will this lead to the polarization of society? And of course there is the entire privacy issue that we’ve now been dealing with based on all the information that we have at hand, and will just continue to have more and more of. Nick ended his discussion by asking the question, which side are you on – the controlling or the liberating?

Day 3 on Wednesday morning got underway with the keynote: Search Has Changed Everything… And So Can You by Gordon McLeod, president of The Wall Street Journal Digital Network. Gordon discussed how the WSJ slowly, but surely, changed how they do business. They now have increased their organic search results by 33% which is more than double since October of ’06. Part of this has been by expanding their free online content which has consisted of mostly lifestyle and sports articles. As Gordon stated, the WSJ is basically a content company, not a technology company, but they are learning how to use technology better. Currently they have 1.1 million subscribers and 14.7 million monthly visitors which Gordon wants to see both areas grow. Part of their strategy to obtain this is to have ongoing SEO training throughout the company… “It’s not a project anymore”.

There were several session tracks on Day 3 include Fundamentals, Stats & Research, Social Search and Vertical & Retail. I followed the Social Search Track and the first session was a great one titled Social Media Marketing – What is it and What is it Good For? It featured five panelists including Jory Des Jardins, cofounder & president of Strategic Alliances of BlogHer – which happens to have the next event in New York City that I’d like to attend in a few weeks. I could write an entire article just on this session alone, which I probably will eventually do. There were some great case studies shared on brands that have integrated social media into their marketing mix and have received success. The overarching teaching that all the panelists tried to pass on to the audience is that social media is not about just throwing out a message to an audience but instead it’s all about relationships and the conversation. You need to invest the time to do it right.

Wednesday’s afternoon keynote was with Jason Calacanis, founder and CEO of Mahalo.com, which is a human-powered search engine focused on the top English-language vertical search terms such as travel, products, news, entertainment, sports, food, and health. Jason was also the CEO and cofounder of Weblogs, Inc., a network of blogs that he sold to AOL in Nov. ‘05 and then was appointed SVP. Jason has an especially open communications style and he and Kevin Ryan had a very casual conversation on stage, though they kept complaining that the lights were too bright and they couldn’t see the audience. Kevin speaks to people very much through Twitter, which at one time he became the most followed person in the world. He even shared his cell phone number with us, which I won’t divulge here since he said he’s had some “stalking” issues in the past.

Anyhow, so I did miss Thursday’s keynote speaker, Andrew Tomkins, Chief Scientist at Yahoo! Research. Andrew’s research over the last eight years has focused on measurement, modeling, and analysis of content, communities, and users on the World Wide Web. I’m sure it was very informative and hopefully I’ll be able to download his presentation.

Overall I’d say the conference was very successful. I did not get actual attendance numbers, but it appears to be the same as last year, around 8,000 people. They tried some new formats this year and they did do a good job of staying on schedule and leaving some time for Q&A’s at the end of the sessions.

However, there never seems to be enough time for these and when they end you always have the race up to the front of the room if you want to talk with any of the speakers. It’s definitely an event I would recommend and after all, it is New York. Maybe next time I’ll make it for the pub crawl!

The application will not only allow users to fill out brackets with their picks for each round of the tournament but they’ll also have access to all the tournament coverage from CBS Sports, CSTV, CBSSports.com and NCAA.com, including links to watch all of the live action on the NCAA March Madness on Demand service. In 2007, more than 2.6 million Facebook users joined at least one bracket group in a similar tournament brackets feature run by the site. “Working with Facebook, an extremely viral social utility with a tremendous core of both college students and alumni was a natural solution as we looked to build a brackets application around the most popular college sports tournament,” said Jason Kint, Senior Vice President and General Manager of CBSSports.com. “This presents an ideal opportunity to extend the CBSSports.com brand to yet another platform and one containing a very engaged and loyal audience.”

I’ve added the app to my Facebook profile today and invited a bunch of friends to join. So, you can always find it by looking for me on Facebook as well. If you do, just let me know you saw this article.

Now that we’ve turned the calendar page into the second month of 2008, it appears that there are several trends pointing to the fact that 2008 may be the year promotional marketers and bloggers finally start to connect.

First off, blogs are very powerful because they allow millions of people to easily publish and share their ideas, and millions more to read and respond. They engage the writer and reader in an open conversation and are shifting the Internet paradigm as we know it.

Technorati is the recognized authority on blogs and they currently track close to 113 million blogs with over 175,000 new blogs appearing each day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second. Recent stats estimate that 39% of American adults regularly read blogs, which equates to roughly over 8.6 million readers absorbing user-generated content over traditional media.

Interactive promotions have also seen increased usage by marketers to not only drive traffic to their website but also to build their brand. Just take a look at some of the recent promotions that were associated with this year’s Super Bowl. Doritos executed its second annual Crash the Super Bowl contest in which they ran a :60 ad that consisted of a consumer generated music video created by the contest’s winner. Pepsi launched its biggest promotion ever with a Justin Timberlake ad promoting their new Pepsi Stuff loyalty program. Unilever’s Sunsilk hair care brand kicked off its Life Can’t Wait consumer-generated contest promotion featuring Madonna, Shakira and Marilyn Monroe. Plus P&G’s Tide brand created a My Talking Stain promotional micro-site that invites consumers to submit their own stain ad and play Be the Stain instant win game for chances to win.

Survey results released by Jupiter Research last year showed that when consumers were asked which where their top online activities, 50% of those answered participation in contests or sweepstakes. The only activities that scored higher involved email, search, product research/buying and online billing/statements. These further stats demonstrate even more the value of online promotions:

• 80% of consumers have entered an online sweepstakes
• 70% of consumers say they’re influenced by promotions
• 68% of consumers actively participate in promotions
• 88% are seeking out more promotions than they did last year
• 81% of consumers say they have made a purchase due to a promotion
• 89% of consumers like to receive promotional messages online, 47% in-store, 33% direct mail, 25% phone, and 6% via text message
• Promotional incentives can more than double email open rates and improve click-through rates by as much as 1000%

Now while advertising on blogs has yet to provide measurable results for marketers, interactive promotions, such as online sweepstakes, user-generated contests and instant-win games, have supplied definitive results. These types of interactive promotions are one of the most powerful ways to motivate interaction on the Internet. By putting the right incentive in front of the right audience you can get then to act and once you have their personal information this then enables the start of a dialog for a permission-based, data-driven relationship thus allowing you to deliver personalized and relevant offers.

Interactive agencies, such as industry leader ePrize, are booming and are further proof that interactive promotions are successful. Last week ePrize announced their 2007 sales results in which they saw a 38-percent growth in net sales to $49.6 million. On top of that they added 174 new clients and launched 1,366 promotions nationwide last year, nearly 70-percent more promotions than they launched in 2006.

So I asked myself, what better topic is there in the marketing industry to write about right now then the Super Bowl? I decided I might as well join the hype that has already begun building (and will most likely continue till at least the day after the game) and chime in.

With that decision made, Doritos of course is my obvious choice of a brand’s promotional campaign to write about. Doritos has now already gone down in history with their Super Bowl campaign from last year as the one that really got the user-generated content craze going on a mass scale. Most of us in marketing and advertising have been following this trend throughout 2007 and have seen this particular promotion featured in just about every presentation and/or article done on this subject.

To back track one more time, at the end of 2006 more than 1,000 videos were submitted to the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” online contest. From these entries two :30 spots actually ran during commercial breaks of the Super Bowl broadcast and the spot “Live the Flavor” was awarded the grand prize. Recent news announced that the guys that created this winning ad actually entered the competition to help get their company, Five Point Productions, off the ground. As of today the company is reported doing extremely well and they apparently no longer have to solicit work. So, if you’d like more background on them as well as the events that transpired a year ago you can visit their contest blog as well as their website to learn more.

Now Doritos has come back this year with a new “Crash the Super Bowl” user-generated contest. This year they’ve focused on music and asked people to submit video and audio clips of themselves performing an original song for a chance to have it aired during the Super Bowl XLII broadcast. Beginning back on Oct. 25th entries could be submitted through the Snack Strong promotional site or through MySpace. Then on Dec. 10th the judges selected the top 10 entries and visitors were invited to vote on these semi-finalists to determine the three final performers.

Many entered this year and now only three remain which are:

• Kina Grannis, 22, of Austin, TX, “Message From Your Heart,”
• Landon Austin, 19, of Dallas, “Waitin”
• Nivla, 27, featuring P. Oberoi of New York, “Be Easy”

Each will receive $10,000 and a trip to Phoenix to attend the Dorito’s Super Bowl party. Voting is going on now till Jan. 27th on the SnackStrong promotional site which is supported by MySpaceTV.com. They’ve created two different widgets that people can place on their website, blogs or their MySpace, Facebook page that invites people to cast their vote today. The final winner who has the most votes will be revealed when Frito-Lay plays their 60: music video during a commercial break on Super Bowl XLII. Besides the airtime the grand prize winner will also receive a recording contract.

I’m still not sure if the user-generated content promotional trend has reached its peak or not, but it sure continued to grow all throughout 2007. I keep hearing about one new interactive promotional contest after another that involves inviting someone to create something and submit it for a chance to win. The majority of these contests choose a winner based on a degree of individual skill or uniqueness whether it’s writing a song, creating a video, uploading a photograph, composing a themed essay, whipping up a creative, new recipe, or showcasing some degree of talent.

So we’ll just have to watch Super Bowl XLII on February 3rd and see who will receive this year’s fame …and I’m not talking about Tom Brady and company either.