1. Champion an Underdog

Cheetos has a way of inserting itself into pop culture in a cheeky way. For instance, the brand once created a perfume called “Cheeteau,” named after its brand icon, Chester Cheetah. So, when it came to finding a way to associate itself with the Olympics in a way that caught the attention of Millennials, the brand used the underappreciated sport of curling as its promotional platform. Because if anyone knows about (cheese) curls, it’s Chester, right? The brand created a limited-edition product, Cheetos Curls, and concocted a curling victory dance performed by NFL stars in a fun music video. Sure enough, “doing the curl” caught fire as the cheer of choice for the sport, and in doing so raised an underdog sport—along with the brand—to social media viral status. Agency: The Marketing Arm

2. Hyper-Local Fan Engagement

Bud Light found a way to cultivate brand love with local Cleveland Browns football fans by offering them free beer—but only if, and when, the team actually won a game. The brand installed 37 “Victory Fridges” that opened when the Browns won their first game in nearly two seasons. Thanks to influencers and media coverage, the fridges—locked with actual chains (and digital locks)—became a subject of conversation each week. By unlocking this treasure trove for local fans at just the right moment, the brand tapped into a collective desire shared by a very specific group of locally-based consumers. Agency: Fusion Marketing.

3. Scarcity as a Buzz Builder

A sure-fire way to create demand for a product or service is to make it exclusive. Cheetos did just that with its Flamin’ Hot Spot restaurant, which featured 10 signature dishes inspired by its Flamin’ Hot Cheetos product and crafted by locally-based celebrity chef Roy Choi. The pop-up lasted just three days and, most importantly, its 500 online dining registrations sold out within an hour. (Not to mention, 9,755 others were waitlisted.) The attendance of dozens of influencers and celebrities added to the buzz as well. Agency: The Marketing Arm

4. Immersive Product Demos

For Uber’s urban aviation division to make its flying car concept a reality to stakeholders from a variety of industries, from aviation, government, investment and technology, the brand needed attendees to truly visualize the technology—one that’s essentially yet-to-be-created. The solution, employed by the Infinity Marketing Team at the 2018 Uber Elevate Summit, was a collection of hands-on, immersive experiences, including a “Model Garden” showcasing the first flying car reference models developed by partners across the industry. Most impressive: Attendees could take a virtual reality ride in a full-scale eVTOL (Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing) vehicle by Bell Helicopter, which brought to life the feeling of flying above traffic.

5. Co-Created Content

To engage festival attendees at Coachella and Panorama in a fresh way, HP and Intel reimagined its long-standing footprints at the events by creating a “Digital Eden” in which festivalgoers could create their own shareable digital art pieces. Touchpoints included a “Hydration Art” station where attendees could design their own water bottle labels, create light painting that became a shareable GIF, and experiment with flower “bloom art” controlled by an HP digital stylus. Through interacting with HP’s products, festivalgoers became artists themselves—with takeaways to prove it. Agency: Infinity Marketing Team

6. Civic Engagement

Country Time Lemonade caught wind of something seriously sinister happening in cities across the nation: Kids’ lemonade stands were being shut down in some cities due to not having the proper permits. Realizing that this was not a positive development for the rite of passage that is the lemonade stand, nor likely to help Country Time to continue playing a part in this tradition, the brand set up a national “Legal-Ade” campaign to help play off fines and permitting fees for those young entrepreneurs. It even inspired real change in one local Denver market, where a bill was introduced to overturn the lemonade stand law altogether. Agency: Marketing Werks

7. Mini-Music Festivals

A new trend is popping up: the mini-music festival. Some younger consumers are forgoing large music festivals for more intimate, specialized events. W Hotels capitalized on the trend with its global hotel music festival to showcase the benefits of being a member of the Marriott Bonvoy loyalty program. For two days, W hotels in Hollywood, Barcelona and Bali offered performances that were then live-streamed on Marriott Rewards’ social channels. Adding to the festival vibe were VIP upgrades and experiences; food and beverage tie-ins like Shake Shack; and fitness opportunities. Agency: IMG Live

8. Macro + Micro-Influencer Approach

Micro-influencers are all the rage these days for their ability to produce and prioritize meaningful brand engagement that sometimes trumps the reach enjoyed by macro-influencers. But let’s face it: It’s hard to ignore that macro reach. Enter Sunny Delight, which utilized both micro- and macro-influencers in its SunnyD Boldly Original Campaign to drive awareness and household penetration. The macro-influencer portion used well-known personalities to share what makes them “boldly original,” while micro-influencers helped ramp up an Instagram contest among consumers to show why they, too, were boldly original.  Agency: Sunflower Group and 360PR+.

9. Multi-Sensory Experiences

More and more, experiential marketing is embracing the five senses. In the case of the Netflix film “Bird Box,” the promotional platform centered around a mobile activation in which attendees were blindfolded—mimicking the plight of the main character in the film, played by actress Sandra Bullock—while being pummeled with terrifying sounds, vibrations, special effects and voiceovers within a vehicle made to look like the set of the film. Across its 23-day tour, the activation’s visceral experience entertained 2,500 visitors without any publicity ahead of time. And the results speak for themselves: The film was viewed 45 million times in the first week alone. Agency: MC2

10. Craft Personalization

Experiences that are memorable for attendees often feature an element of personalization. To promote Universal Thread, a new women’s denim clothing collection launching at Target stores across the country, the retailer created an experience in 250 locations that allowed shoppers who purchased the brand’s products to have personal messages embroidered onto the articles of clothing by a team of on-site tailors. Cute, quirky iron-on patches in the shape of avocados or cacti were handed out, too. The personalization strategy paid off for the brand: Stores that participated enjoyed a 74 percent higher lift in sales, 145,000 patches were distributed and approximately 750 garments were custom-embroidered. Agency: Grow Marketing

The post The 10 Best Promotional Marketing Ideas of 2019 appeared first on Chief Marketer.

Best Campaign Targeting Gen Z
Brand: Microsoft
Campaign: Microsoft Tiny House
Agency: Riddle & Bloom

College students spend more per year on technology than any other stage in life, and Microsoft needed to increase awareness with this key demographic. Getting past a perception that it didn’t connect with the college lifestyle was a must.

Rather than “go big or go home,” it went… small, with the Microsoft Tiny House, a fully-custom, 24-foot pop-up interactive lounge space that capitalized on the hot small dwelling trend. The moveable interactive space on wheels was equal parts educational and recreational—a study lounge that doubled as a coffee house, gaming space and roof-deck hangout spot.

The experience toured to 10 college campuses across the country in spring 2018, making two- to three-day stops to engage with students and faculty at campus bookstores, orientations and other events.

The goal was to get college students to spend time with Microsoft in a new way, and build buzz with a small-scale budget. To make that happen, the Tiny House included self-lowering wall panels that unfolded to become the flooring and increase footprint space for full activity. Inside featured a lounge and beverage station, Xbox games, a music stage, an area for product demos and swag giveaways and more.

The Tiny House program turned out to be prime real estate: The 10 schools visited saw a 15 percent lift in Microsoft active users YOY, with 65 percent of students who interacted with the promotions saying they were likely or very likely to use Office365. The program boasted 52,125 unique passerby impressions, 10,992 unique engagements and an average dwell time of seven minutes.

• Read case studies from all the 2019 Gold PRO Award winners across 26 categories.

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Here we take a look at the campaigns that earned Jack Morton that honor. Dig into these case studies to find a few ideas to steal or insights that can perhaps add a little zip to your next campaign project.

NETFLIX: GOLD PRO AWARD
Netflix at AsiaPOP Comicon 2018
Best Use of Event or Experential Marketing—(Five Venues or Less)

AsiaPop Comicon showcases not only Hollywood stars, local celebrities and entertainment culture, but trends in the Philippines as well. This made the event an ideal locale to spotlight the growing library of Netflix global and regional content.

Netflix had the biggest exhibition space at the event—3,937 square feet—and wanted to share multiple brand stories with the target audience: Filipinos age 18-25 who love entertainment and sharing their thoughts about it socially. Pinoy fans often connect and form communities (called “barkada”) based on their love for their favorite shows, making entertainment a crucial social media variable.

The experience was designed to create participation among super fans of three of the biggest Netflix titles, Iron Fist, Stranger Things and Riverdale. On a NYC Chinatown-inspired street, fans could channel the power of the Iron Fist to smash walls and wreck cars, and then get a spray-on tattoo to commemorate the experience. Stranger Things devotees could open a door to the Upside Down, explore the Byers’ home or help build Mike’s vision of the Demogorgon tunnels. Meanwhile, while visiting the “town” of Riverdale fans could stop by Pop’s Diner and rock out to a live performance by Josie & the Pussycats, or pose for a class picture for the Riverdale High Yearbook.

• Read case studies from all the 2019 Gold PRO Award winners across 26 categories.

Visitors could share what they love about their favorite programs on the Netflix Journey Wall, an interactive art installation where fans used colored threads to map the links between shows. The result was a hugely sharable photo opportunity—and valuable insight into show preferences in the region.

Over a period of three days, more than 15,000 unique interactions were tracked. The Netflix experience reached 11.4 million people and garnered more than 200 million impressions across social media platforms, 5.5 times more than the previous year. To boot, the Iron Fist Facebook group grew eight percent during the event.

UNILEVER—GOLD PRO AWARD
Best New Product Launch

EATON
SILVER PRO AWARD 
Best B2B Campaign and Best Use of Gamification, Contests and Sweepstakes
BRONZE PRO AWARD
Best Use of Content Marketing

LL Bean—SILVER PRO AWARD
Best Local/Regional Campaign

The post Ideas to Steal from MVPro Winning Campaigns appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The Cheetos brand campaign, “Teach Me How to Curl,” won the Platinum PRO Award for the best overall campaign among the hundreds of entries. The clever activation surrounded a tie-in with USA Curling that tapped social media, music, influencer and a limited-time product called Cheetos Curls to deliver big results.

Two agencies tied for the MVPro, showing an incredibly diverse array of creative thinking, bold strategies and fresh approaches that added up to multiple gold, silver and bronze awards for multiple brands.

Infinity Marketing Team took that award for its work for Intel, Uber, HP and HP Omen. Jack Morton Worldwide took home an MVPro for its work on Nextflix, LLBean, Eaton and Unilever,

It’s a thrilling time to be in brand activation and promotion marketing, a legacy industry that is being embraced by consumers and marketers who realize that smart promotions and experiences are some of the only brand tactics today that can truly cut through, build brands and loyalty and drive purchases.

Join us in celebrating the incredible work being created by this industry by visiting the 2019 PRO Awards winner’s site to read case studies and view creative of all of the gold winners across 26 categories, including campaigns from Old Navy, W Hotels, Kraft, Bacardi, AB inBev, Visa and many others.

The winners were announced during our first-ever PRO Awards brunch at Neuehouse in New York City.

Congratulations to all the winners and finalists!

The post Frito-Lay and The Marketing Arm Take Top 2019 PRO Award appeared first on Chief Marketer.

The 28th Annual PRO Awards has opened the call for entries. It is the most prestigious awards program for brand activation marketers, showcasing the most innovative promotion campaigns created and executed by top brand and agency professionals.

To ensure the best outcome, we have put together five helpful tips to guide you through the process so you can wow those brand-side judges.

1. Before You Begin
A hastily written or incomplete entry appears that way and will be reflected in your score. You worked extremely hard concepting, developing and executing the promotion you are about to submit. Take your time, organize your thoughts, and speak with the program leaders to flush out all the details. Chat with the client, and review all of the creative components and results. Take a look at the 2018 winners to get tips from the write-ups about what made them standouts.

Ask yourself a few questions: What elements of this promotion make it worthy of winning a PRO Award? Why did you choose this particular campaign? Was it the creative? The results? The theme? What’s different or unique about it? What made it successful? What will impress the judges?

Carefully read the category descriptions and then decide which category (or categories) best fit the overall promotion. Enter in as many categories as possible, but make sure it’s a good match.

2. Getting Started
DO NOT include the name of your agency in the write up, samples or video; you will be disqualified. The entrant should be anonymous to the judges. The one exception is if you are a brand submitting an entry, then it is fine to mention the brand name.

3. Filling Out the Entry Form
Answer all the questions completely. Be concise and specific and adhere to the word counts. Your entry will lose the judges’ interest if they have to search for the important details or get bogged down trying to get through too many unnecessary words. A shorter explanation is sometimes better. Provide a clear picture of what the goals/objectives were. Take the judges from start to finish, add color, interesting facts and other tidbits. This should be a powerful story. By the end of this paragraph, the judges should be shouting, “WOW!”

4. Results Matter
We can’t emphasize enough the importance of submitting results. If you skip the results portion of the write up you will certainly lose points. The key here is to make sure the results match your stated goals for the program. This is your only chance to give the judges enough information to gauge the effectiveness of your promotion. Campaigns can sound and look terrific, but the results need to stack up. State in your entry if the results are proprietary or not for public view.

5. Supporting Materials
Creative helps tell the story. Upload images and video that support the details in the campaign. (Specifications can be found in the entry form).

Good luck!

The post 5 Tips to Win a Coveted 2019 PRO Award appeared first on Chief Marketer.