Donna's Promo Talk - Promotional Marketing that Creates Excitement and Gets Results

"Attention is the New Currency" Game Changers - Day 1 of PMA's Annual Marketing Conference.

Day 1 of PMA's 2-Day Annual Marketing Conference took place yesterday. I arrived back in Chicago on Tuesday to attend and headed over to the Westin North Hotel where it's being held for the first time and is my first time staying here. They've picked up the theme from last year's conference, Game Changers, and added "The Rules are being rewritten. Don't be left behind".

The folks at PMA asked me to moderate a panel at this year's conference which we called Building Brands through Promotion: Beyond Facebook. This was one of the first break out sessions that was held yesterday right after lunch. The focus of this session was on how to run promotions such as sweepstakes, contests, games through applications on Facebook to grow and engage with fans. Joining me was Mike Nabasny from Wildfire, Jim Belosic the founder of Shortstack and Kelly Lund who's with Capita Technologies. They each showed a brief presentation showing some different case studies that demonstrate how brands are using these apps to connect with their fans. The new changes for Facebook's Timeline for Brands was discussed as well as how to design your app for mobile. Thank you Mike, Jim and Kelly for a great session that was very well attended. So glad to finally meet you all.

Most attendees that I spoke to during the day commented on how much, to their surprise, they enjoyed the opening keynote from David Shing from AOL. I say we were surprised because many of us still remember the old AOL who used to send us those CD's in massive direct mail campaigns, which David kidded about at the start of his presentation. When David took the stage, just by his presence, we knew it was going to be a different talk. He's got a creative background and was dressed in black, with crazy sneakers with wings on them and long black hair with a spike in the middle of his head.

David spoke about how the Communication Game is Changing, which we all know, but when you sum it all up like he did, you realize really how big of a change we are right NOW experiencing. He shared with us some interesting examples of the changes along with statements such as "Attention is the New Currency", and today it's all about "Influencer Marketing". Marketers today need to move to "conversations" and away from "campaigns". Thanks David for an insightful presentation.

The rest of the morning we got to hear from Cindy Donahoe, VP of Pharmacy Marketing at Walgreens. Cindy reviewed with us their "Arm Yourself" campaign which won the top Reggie Award last year. The campaign's focus was all about driving people to a Walgreens location to get their flu shot. Jim Sabia from Crown Imports then made us all want to sit on a beach and drink some Coronas. We did get a chance to drink a few Coronas at the cocktail hour later in the day! The Corona Summer Beach campaign, which included a beach trip giveaway sweepstakes promotion, delivered 845,000 incremental cases of volume over the past two years!

Subway's $5 Footlong has now become a $5 billion brand, instead of just a 4-week promotion that Tony Pace, CMO from Subway, told us. We all know the jingle that plays in our heads when you hear that term. Tony fought the team that wanted to originally go with a $4.99 pricing and ended up with a huge hit!

At the lunch break we were treated to an entertaining and insightful presentation form Jeff Rosenblum, who gave us a preview of the movie "The Naked Brand". Today all brands are transparent, whether they want to be or not. He used Crayola as an example of a brand that from customer reviews of one of their products, the Colored Bubble Launcher, has turned them into a brand that tortures kids and their parents (one tortured father was in the audience). Just go to Amazon and search for the product and you'll see what it's all about.

The most popular topic of the day however was who was taking credit for the amazing summer weather we experienced here in Chicago in the middle of March. I think the high was 81 degrees and it's going to be the same today! The Westin has a patio right on the river that we were able to step out on during breaks to get a breadth of fresh air an enjoy it. Thank you Chicago and the PMA for a great day. Day 2 begins shortly!

Facebook Timeline for Brand Pages: Top Tips to Get You Up and Running

I started writing my weekly blog post last week, as I'm doing now, and stumbled upon the fact that Facebook launched their Timeline for Brands that day. I was promoting the fact that I've now been blogging for 5 years and following my yearly tradition, I was planning to write about the Dove brand since they were featured in my very first blog post. I hopped on over to Dove's Facebook page and to my surprise discovered that they had updated to the new Timeline format. I then wrote about what I found there not fully realizing what it all meant yet.

As the day went on, I started to receive many emails and newsletters that all were about the Facebook Timeline introduction. I tried to read as much as I could, as quickly as I could, to understand what all this means to brands and specifically to the current sweepstakes and contest tabs I had running for clients. Here's a quick summary of the top changes you need to know. Since I was invited by GM last week to test drive a new Chevy Volt at the Rochester Auto Show, I decided to use their new page as an example.

Now if you visit your Facebook page you'll see a message from Facebook at the top and a link to preview what your page would look like in Timeline. So Facebook has already started the process for us. Everyone has till March 30 to further create their Timeline and at that time it will be published whether you are ready or not. Everyone can publish it sooner however. and many I see already have.

The biggest change is that you now have the expanded space at the top of the page for a large cover photo (851 x 315 pixels). You can really get creative with this space and use it to enhance your brand, however it also comes with a few restrictions. Facebook states: “Covers may not display calls to action or references to Facebook features such as “Like this Page”, purchase or pricing info such as “40% off” or “Download at our website”, or contact information such as web address.”

The tab pages are also larger with Timeline. Currently they are 520 pixels wide and with Timeline they will expand to 810 pixels. All the 520 pixels tabs will still work once you switch over to Timeline and will look centered in the middle of the 810-pixel layout without any adjustments. You can then update an existing tab to a the larger size at any time. The biggest disadvantage now is that we can no longer have specific default landing pages for non-fans. For instance a Like Us to enter a sweepstakes or contest tab or a Welcome tab that invites non-fans to become fans will not work once you convert to Timeline.

Without default landing tabs, pages will now need to communicate in a different way to encourage non-fans to Like the page and become a fan. One option is to use the smaller photo tiles that are now located on the right side of the page below the cover photo. Facebook is referring to these as the application tab icons. There are four that are automatically displayed and if you have multiple apps then the visitor will have to click a button to the far right to expose the rest.

Similar to the existing menu on a page's left hand side, the first app icon is Photos which cannot be moved from that position. There is also another app icon that will automatically appear which features the number of Likes on your page. This icon can be moved from it's default position, but it cannot be deleted. There are a total of 12 app icon spaces, however since two are permanent you really can only add up to 10 apps. These new application icons dimensions are 111 × 74 pixels and page administrators can easily upload a photo and name each icon.

Another way to raise awareness of specific apps or events that I really like is the ability to “pin” certain posts to the top of the Timeline. Similar to how us bloggers feature a post so that it remains at the top of a blog for a specified period of time, pinning a post to the top of Timeline allows you to do the same. A pinned post is distinguished by a small, orange flag. You can pin only one item at a time, and the pinned item then will stay at the top of the Timeline for up to 7 days as well as permanently within its chronological place. So you should start to plan out a calendar of what items you want to pin and for how long.

I wanted to point out another new feature which is the ability for a fan to private message a page. Once they do the brand page will have the ability to private message them back. So this could be a great way to handle issues that should remain private and not open to the public. For example if someone posts on your page a problem that they are having you could suggest that they private message you so that you can work directly with them offline to help solve their issue.

Going forward with your new Timeline page you really will need to update your page every day. People who visit your page will see an activity stream on the upper right hand side that shows the visitor their friends that are also fans of the page and any interactions between them and the page. If no friends have interacted then it displays the most recent post. Here you'll see 2 of my friends on the Chevy Volt page along with the post I wrote last week regarding the test drive I did. It's important to plan out daily content that engages users by asking questions and encouraging comments and shares so that this section doesn't look empty.

Overall, the new changes for brand page are a big plus, but of course it will take us all a while to get used to. It definitely is an exciting time to be in this business and I'm looking forward to seeing what some of these new pages will feature. Are you or your company planning to do anything differently with the new page? Please share your thoughts and/or questions in the comments below.

Promo Talk Celebrates 5 Years of Blogging while Dove Launches it's Facebook Timeline Page

Today is Leap Day where every four years we get an extra day added to the end of February. Some say we should do something different with the day since it's a gift of time. However, today really is just another Wednesday and we all have schedules to keep to, right?

First thing I did when I sat down at my computer this morning was to visit Facebook and hop on to a dear friend's page to wish her a Happy Birthday. I always remember that Diane was born on leap day and I noticed that many others remembered as well since she had lots of wishes. I celebrated a big birthday myself this week. I am now officially a 5 year old blogger. I wrote my first blog post on Donna's Promo Talk February 27, 2007, and have been at it since. Thanks again to my friend and founder of the Lip-sticking blog, Yvonne DiVita, along with her business partner and now husband, Tom Collins, for helping me get started. Lip-sticking is older then my blog, so I guess some of us are now considered old timers in this business.

Part of my birthday celebration tradition is writing about the same brand that I choose to devote my first blog post about which is Dove. They're a great brand that I love and have been following their Real Beauty Campaign over the years and I continue to support them. So after I wished my friend Diane a Happy Leap Day Birthday this morning I then searched for Dove and pulled up their Facebook page. To my surprise I found that it was a great day to visit their page because Dove had just converted to the new Facebook Timeline. I had read that Facebook was planning to slowly roll out Timeline for businesses, but I hadn't see one yet.

It really is a very interesting page. Dove has an expanded photo section on the top showcasing women. Their page says that they updated their cover photo 17 hours ago. So this is a very recent change. At the top left of the page there is a menu bar that includes Timeline, Now, and Highlights and each has a drop down menu. So I chose "Now" and went to the bottom of that menu to "Founded". It tells me that Dove was founded in 1957 (a year before I was born) and has some old B&W photos including this one.

I then started to move up the timeline and saw that they had some highlights of memorable moments, such as a photo in 2007 of their ProAge campaign in which they included older women showing lots of skin. Then I found what appeared to be their first post on March 30, 2009, which Dove asked this question "5% of young women are excited about the future. What are you excited for?" That made me go back and look at when I first joined Facebook which my Timeline tells me was July 31, 2007. That means I've been blogging longer than posting on Facebook.

Further up Dove's timeline I found the infamous "Evolution" video which they posted on June 23, 2009, that went on to became the first video to really go viral on YouTube. Dove featured this photo here on their wall on Oct. 2, 2009 which was on the cover of Glamour magazine of some of the top "plus-size" models working at the time. They look pretty beautiful to me.

I then jumped over to the "Timeline" menu to see what that was all about and found a link to specific pages you could visit that represent different topics such as Skin, Hair, Deodorant, Men+Care and Social Mission. I visited the Hair page and found a sweepstakes that just ended that tied into the red carpet and Academy Awards called the Dove Hair StyleCast. For six weeks Dove gave five fans a week a Dove Hair Style Pack.

Under the "Highlights menu" you can view Posts by Friends, Posts by Page and Posts by Others. I found just 3 of my friends that Like this page and no activity. I hope this blog post drives some of my friends to Like the Dove page. Currently the page has 5,948,700 likes and 23,051 are talking about it.

Dove's post today says the following: "Real women have been our inspiration from the very beginning. Today your photos, stories, and memorable moments make up our new timeline. Take a look and see how real women, like you, have always been at the heart of the Dove story."

So my first impression of a Facebook Timeline Business page is a very good one. I'll have to check out some other big brands to see if they converted yet. If you see any leave a comment here so we can visit them too and let us know what you think.

We all now should be thinking about what we're going to put on our Facebook business Timeline page. Yes, it is hard to keep up with the latest technology, but I hope to still be blogging in another five years from now and writing about it! Thanks everyone for reading my posts! I wish I could spend this Leap Day just reading other people's post. But gotta get to work.

I Love this Valentine's Day Pet Kissing Photo Contest

Valentine's Day has now come and gone and I haven't had the chance to write a post about the holiday this year until now. It appears that marketers are the ones that are in love with the holiday more than any of us. This year especially I received more emails and saw more ads focused on what I should be doing that day with the person I love and what I should buy this person. It's gotten a little out of control, don't you think? However, it is a good excuse to remind someone that you love them.

Here's a very cute promotion that got my attention which involves some of the loves of my life, pets! Sure Fit, a provider of slipcovers and home and pet solutions, launched a Valentine’s Day Pet Kissing Photo Contest! They apparently have had past successes with their Halloween Pet Costume Contest and Holiday Pet Photo Contest, so they came up with a way to celebrate Valentine's Day.

Sure Fit ran the contest on their Facebook page and invited fans to submit a photo entry of themselves with their beloved pet sharing a smooch for a chance to win items from the Sure Fit Pet Collection. Three prize packages were awarded that consisted of Sure Fit products both humans and pets love!

Approved submissions were posted in the Sure Fit contest photo album on the Sure Fit Facebook page. Facebook fans were invited to vote for their favorite entries by “liking” the photos. The photo with the most “likes” won the contest which was announced on Valentine’s Day. And the winners are:

1st Place - Fritzi the Jack Russell!!

2nd Place - Balim Receiving His Special Valentine Kiss

3rd Place - Chesapeake, our Retriever

Now even though I do really like this contest, I have to comment on the fact that Sure Fit really was not in compliance with Facebook's Promotional Guidelines since they used the "like" button as their voting method. So don't go copying how they executed this contest. Sure Fit should be utilizing a application to post the photos in a gallery and then invite people to vote on them. So I think I'll reach out to the folks at Sure Fit and suggest ways to run this contest in the future that are in line with Facebook's guidelines.

Also, I have a couple of antique wing chairs that could really use some new skins. My cats have been using the chairs as their scratching post for way too long! So I now have become a fan of Sure Fit Slipcovers.

I'll be speaking next month at PMA's Annual Marketing Conference: Game Changers

Next month I’ll be heading back again to Chicago to attend the PMA's Annual Marketing Conference taking place March 14-15 at the Westin Hotel. They've picked up the theme from last year's conference, Game Changers, with a new twist, "The Rules are being rewritten. Don't be left behind".

I say this theme statement is right on today. All of us have to deal with marketing in some respect and it's hard to keep up with the latest technologies, let alone understand how to use them effectively. I was just watching the Today Show yesterday morning and they were interviewing Kate Upton, this year's Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover model. She's 19 years old, virtually unknown and was discovered by the videos she has posted of herself on YouTube. She said she has now fulfilled her dream and looks forward to what this opportunity will bring her. I guess you could say she's a Game Changer!

I am honored to have been asked by the folks at PMA to moderate a panel at this year's conference which is called Building Brands through Promotion: Beyond Facebook. The focus will be on how to utilize Facebook application to grow your fanbase and engage with them by running sweepstakes, contests, games and other promotional offers. Joining me will be Mike Nabasny from Wildfire, Jim Belosic the founder of Shortstack and Kelly Lund who's with Capita Technologies. They represent three companies that have been Game Changers in the way we market our businesses and brands on Facebook. Each will be reviewing a different case study that demonstrates how brands are using these apps to connect with their fans. This breakout session will be taking place on day one of the conference, March 14 at 2 pm.

Other than the 15 breakout sessions there will also be 10 Keynote speakers. Some include, Jim Sabia from Crown Imports talking about the Corona brand, Jeff Rosenblum, Founding Partner of the Naked Brand, a documentary that shows how companies can't hide from the truth, and Cindy Donohoe, in charge of Pharmacy Marketing at Walgreen's, winner of last year's top Reggie Award. David Shing, Digital Prophet who's with AOL will kickoff the conference and Day 2 includes Lisa Landsman, Head of Commerce for Google and our very own former CMO of Kodak, Jeffrey Hayzlett, who is now a best-selling author.

I've been a guest of PMA's conference for the past five years and have written many blog posts about their conferences before, during and after. They formally named me as their "Official Conference Blogger" a couple of year's ago. Actually, PMA was one of the catalyst that got me blogging in the first place.

I launched this blog five years ago this month. At the time PMA didn't have a blog so they invited me to be a guest to their conference in return for blogging about it. I then quickly learned as much as I could about blogging from Yvonne DiVita, Lip-sticking  blog founder, and her partner, Tom Collins, who then helped me launch my blog. They introduced me to Greg Bell who had also recently started a blog to "cover jazz around Rochester and Beyond" called Jazz@Rochester. Greg joined me at the PMA Marketing Conference in 2007 and we hosted a breakfast roundtable together on blogging. It was still a fairly new marketing concept at the time. So thank you again, Yvonne, Tom, Greg and the PMA.

If anyone would like to attend the conference you have up until this Friday, Feb. 17 to register here at the discounted rate. You can also register for one day at a reduced fee if you can't attend for both. Since I'm a speaker I have a code that provides an additional $100 savings. So if you're interested leave me a comment and I'll email you the code. The full conference registration also includes a ticket to the Reggie Awards dinner on March 15 which showcases the best promotions of 2011. So I hope to see some of you in Chicago.

Pet Video Contest Offers Chances to Win Plus Matching Charity Donations

Art-Casso recently launched a one-of-a-kind pet video contest that we assisted in. Art-Casso is a small online retailer that sells NO MESS paint kit for pets that allows dogs and cats to paint with their paws and/or body.

The company was originally founded in 2006 with the idea that pets and owners could create paw paintings to cherish without making a mess. Joanna Sasso is the Company’s new president who's goal is to revitalize the Art Casso image. She believes that the animal-human bond can be enhanced through this interactive paw painting activity. What better way to create awareness of these products than with a promotion such as this video contest?

Participants can enter the contest by uploading videos of their pets enjoying Art-Casso’s paint kit products. The grand prize winner will receive a $500 check and an additional $500 will be donated to the winner ’s choice of a 501(c)(3) animal charity that is at least three years of age. A First Prize winner will receive $100 along with a matching donation and also a Second Prize winner will receive $50 check also with a matching donation.

To participate, individuals must first visit the Art Casso Facebook page and Like the page to become a fan. They will then be given access to the contest application which contains a special limited-time, Facebook Fan Discount Code that can be used on Art-Casso’s website to purchase a pet paint kit. After receiving the product they then create a video of their dog or cat painting with the kit and then come back to the contest application on Art-Casso’s Facebook page to submit an entry form along with their video.

Video submissions should be no more than one-minute in length and will be accepted up till March 11. At that time a panel of judges that includes Art-Casso President, Joanna Sasso, Celebrity Pet Expert, Charlotte Reed and Givenik Marketing Associate, Ben Cohen will review each submission and select three finalists. “Judges will determine the winner based on pet and owner interaction, creativity of the video and how the duo best highlight the essence of the non-mess paint kit,” says Art-Casso President, Joanna Sasso.

The videos of the three finalists will be featured on Art-Casso’s Facebook page around March 15 and then the public will be invited to vote for their favorite painting pet video up until March 31. The grand prize winner should be announced on April 1.

This promotion is a great example of how you can drive people to both your website and your Facebook page. The contest helps create awareness of the product, hopefully stimulates sales of the product, increases the Facebook fan base and helps to build a database from all those that submitted their information along with their video.

We are again utilizing a Facebook application called Shortstack which is very user-friendly. I will be moderating a panel session next month at PMA's Annual Marketing Conference on Facebook Applications for Building Brands With Promotions. Jim Belosic, Founder of Shortstack, along with Mike Nabasny from Wildfire and Kelly Lund from Capita will be joining me on the panel. More to come on the Conference in a future blog post. I would love to see some of you there.

In the meantime check-out the contest. Since I have several pets, I'm going to be creating one of these pet kits myself very soon!

Super Bowl XLVI Wrap Up....And the Winners Are:

Super Bowl XLVI created some big winners and also some losers. Obviously as we all know now, the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots in what was a come-from-behind, great game. The Giants got to parade down Broadway in New York City yesterday to celebrate with their fans. Yes, the fans and New York are all winners here as well. Plus of course we have Eli Manning, the MVP of the game, who now has two Super Bowl rings, one more than his brother Payton as the media was sure to bring up several times.

In the 6th annual Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Contest the two ads that were chosen from the 5 finalists to broadcast during the game were both winners. However, the Sling Baby ad has now been picked as the winner in the USA TODAY/Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter. Online voting, began after each ad aired during Sunday night's broadcast and ended at 6 pm on Tuesday. Viewers picked from 55 commercials on which advertisers spent up to a record $3.5 million for each 30-second slot. Kevin Willson submitted the ad of the grandmother and baby who snatched a bag of Doritos and he will now receive a million dollars and a consulting contract with The Lonely Island. The other Doritos ad that was broadcast during the game, Man's Best Friend, came in #6.

All of us who signed up to be Papa John's Reward members and voted in their Super Bowl Coin Toss Experience came out winners as well. I voted for heads and heads was the choice that the majority voted for and heads ended up as the actual winner of the coin toss. Yesterday I received my prize code online which is good for a free, large, one-topping pizza and a two-liter Pepsi MAX. Papa Johns sent an email to all members which I had to retrieve from my spam folder. The email invited me to a landing page which I had to type in my name and email to receive my personal code. I have up till March 4 to redeem my prize. Papa John's now had to award many free pizzas, which hopefully for them will turn all us winners into regular customers. It will be interesting to find out the final results as to how many free pizzas were actually redeemed.

Twitter also came out a winner in the social media category averaging more than 10,000 tweets per second and not crashing! According to Twitter, the most tweeted moment of the game was when 12,233 people tweeted in a single second at the end when Tom Brady's Hail Mary pass wasn't caught. The second most tweeted moment came during Madonna's halftime show, which averaged more than 8,000 tweets per second and had a high of 10,245 tweets in a single second.

Personally I was watching the game with my laptop both tweeting and posting updates on Facebook. It was fun to see what others were saying and commenting on. I was trying to stay up to following a few hashtags on Twitter about the ads. My update on Facebook that received the most Likes and comments during the game was this: "David Beckham is pretty good to look at too. Don't ya think?". Now you get a sense of what my women friends like (as well as a male gay friend who Liked it as well).

Towards the end of the game I wasn't socializing any more. I just grabbed another drink and started praying the Giants would come out on top. Which they did in all nail-biting action. Thanks NFL. Now it will be quite some time before we see anymore football. Bring on the Summer Olympic Games!

BTW - I also finally came out a winner in our squares. The safety in the first quarter helped me win that square with a final score of 9-0!

Other than the Giants or Patriots, who else will come out a winner from Super Bowl XLVI?

I will be one of the millions watching Super Bowl XLV1 this Sunday and hoping for a good game, which it should be. As I've stated in my posts over the past couple of weeks, I'm behind the New York Giants all the way and would love to see Eli Manning get another super bowl win, especially while in his brother Peyton's home stadium. I'm sure Peyton will be there also, just not on the field this year.

I'm also hoping to see some real social media integration with the advertising campaigns that we see. If the advertisers are paying an average of $3.5 million for a spot, you would think they would try and get the most bang for their bucks. Last year I called it the "Social Super Bowl" and was disappointed with the overall advertising experience. Other than posting ads on social media, the brands did very little to really engage people and integrate social media into their strategies.

Other than the Giants beating the Patriots, who else is going to come out a winner? Last year the Volkswagen Darth Vader ad scored the highest in the USA Ad Meter for best liked ad. (What was not to like?) Volkswagen utilized social media to post the ad on their blog, on YouTube and their Facebook page five days before the game and it had 13 million views before kickoff. Sine then the ad as gotten numerous awards and nearly 50 million views on YouTube.

This year Volkswagen has already launched The Bark Side, a teaser video featuring a chorus of dogs barking The Imperial March. If you haven't seen it yet, here it is. I love it and think it's brilliant (especially since I'm a sucker for doggies!). It currently has over 10 million views on YouTube. If you click through to YouTube you will also be given the opportunity to view their new game time ad called "The Dog Strikes Back".

Papa John's, the Official Pizza of the NFL, decided not to run an ad during the game last year, but instead launched a huge promotion. They offered a free, large, three-topping pizza to all of its online rewards program members if the game went into overtime as well as a $45 Papa John’s gift card every 45 seconds to randomly selected consumers who ordered its pizzas online during game day.

This resulted in Papa John’s selling over a million pizza's during game day which beat it's previous Super Bowl Sunday sales record of 940,000 pizzas in 2010. Of course they didn't give out the free pizzas since the game last year didn't go into overtime. BTW, the Super Bowl has never gone into overtime, so the odds where in their favor. Papa John's did increase their loyalty membership numbers significantly though from this.

Now this year's promotion has a little better odds for their rewards members. They're offering a free, large, one-topping pizza and a two-liter Pepsi MAX to each member depending on the game’s coin toss. To be eligible people have to be a rewards program and call either heads or tails on the toss at papajohns.com. Tomorrow, Feb. 2, Papa John's will announce on their website what America's choice was and then if that choice is correct on game day all members will win. I just voted and went with heads. So we'll see.

Papa John’s is also running another sweepstakes but instead of giving away gift cards, their giving away pizzas. This year they have been randomly selecting winners from among online pizza-orders every 46 seconds each weekend starting back on Friday, Dec. 30, and ending on this Saturday, Feb. 4, the evening before game day. To follow the "No Purchase Necessary" requirement, rewards members also can enter without ordering a pizza, by following instructions in the Official Rules.

This year Papa John's has also created a promotional 30-second spot TV spot that stars Super Bowl champions Peyton Manning and Jerome “The Bus” Bettis kibitzing in a football stadium with Papa John's founder/chairman/CEO “Papa” John Schnatter talking about the coin-toss promotion. The commercial first aired during Jan. 22’s NFC and AFC Championship games, and has been airing since then.

They have integrated social media into the campaign by including a dedicated Twitter hashtag (#freepapajohns). Also when participants vote online for the coin-toss they have the option to sign into Facebook to “personalize” their experience. I did and I got to see my Facebook profile photo with my name up on the scoreboard in the stadium integrated into the online video. It happened so quickly though I almost missed it. So not the best social media integration I would say.

So now I two have a chance of being a winner after this Sunday's Big Game. Either I could win a free pizza from Papa John's along with an actual Chevy and other prizes from Chevy's Gametime app. (Plus some cash if my squares come out lucky!) It's great to see promotions playing a big role in these marketing strategies. Plus. I'm sure Volkswagen and Doritos won't be the only ads with animals in them. Hope you enjoy the game. I'll be writing a post game review next week. So please check back.

Super Bowl Mobile App from Chevy comes with a big Game Time Sweepstakes

Last Sunday was by far one of the most exciting NFL conference championship game days any real football fan can ask for. Yes, it will take a while for Raven fans to get over the missed chip-shot field goal and the 49er's to wonder what if they didn't turn over the ball in overtime. We're now moving on to Super Bowl XLVI with a big rematch between the Patriots and the Giants. As I said in my last post, I'm betting on Eli Manning and the New York Giants to be this year's champions.

The Super Bowl has now become the most active topic of the millions of us who write blogs posts and updates on Facebook, Twitter and now, Google+. In 2011, the only Facebook status update topic in the world, amongst 800 million users at the time that beat out the Packers winning Super Bowl 45 was the death of Osama bin Laden. Since many of these tweets and Facebook updates come via a mobile phone, this year General Motors and Chevrolet is adding mobile to their mix to capitalize off this.

If you want to watch the Super Bowl on February 5th on your smartphone or tablet, Chevy's got an app for that. The Chevy Game Time app is now available in the Android Market, Apple's App Store and at chevy.com/gametime. The app will ask viewers trivia and poll questions on subjects including the game, teams and commercials. Participants who answer trivia correctly or choose the most-common poll answer will be entered into the Chevrolet Game Time Sweepstakes drawing. The sweepstakes is awarding thousands of prizes including some instant Win Prizes from Bridgestone, Motorola, the NFL and NFLShop.com, Papa John's Pizza and Sirius XM Radio.

Chevrolet will be running several ads during NBC's Super Bowl broadcast. When someone downloads the app, they receive a unique "license plate" number and if anyone's numbers match any plate in Chevy's Super Bowl spots, they will win one of 20 Chevy's. There is also an alternate means of entry in which someone that does not want to download the app can register for the sweepstakes by visiting chevy.com/gametime.

So I just downloaded the app and will try it out. I don't have a tablet yet, so I will be experiencing it off my Droid Incredible phone. Should be interesting. In the meantime we all now have to go a whole weekend with no football! Let the fun begin.

Marketing During the Super Bowl is a No-Brainer for Many Brands

By Guest Blogger, Dave Thomas, Online Content Editor for business.com

While it’s no surprise that advertisements during the Super Bowl cost big dollars, that hasn’t stopped many companies from opening up their checkbooks to market their wares.

Recent reports note that NBC, this year’s host for the Feb. 5 event in Indianapolis, sold its entire allotment of commercial airtime for the game before Thanksgiving 2011, having a waiting list to boot.

According to the network, slots are still open during NBC's pregame show, and those on the waiting list for the Super Bowl will have an opportunity to advertise if other companies forfeit their slots.

So, how much does an ad cost when more than 100 million people tune in to watch the AFC and NFC battle next month?

The average cost for a 30-second spot in 2012 is $3.5 million, with some time slots leading advertisers to spend as much as $4 million. The bottom line is you better have a sizeable amount of cash to spend if you want to get noticed on Super Bowl Sunday during the year’s most watched sporting event.

When you break down the marketing efforts of advertisers and NBC for that matter, at a $3.5 million average, the 70 commercials that appear during the game would lead to $245 million in gross revenue. When you take away the ad agency commission, NBC would take in just over $208 million when all is said and done.

There are also six commercials scheduled for halftime, along with a plethora of them slated to run in the nauseating six hours of pregame hype.

As a spokesperson for the sales and marketing team with the NBC Sports Group noted, “We should shatter all prior records for that day.”

As many marketing and sales pros can attest to, it isn’t just the televisions sets where people will be exposed to advertisements. The network is also selling spots on its live streamed broadcast of the game and on Super Bowl-related programming to be broadcast on the NBC Sports Network.

Among the companies planning to market their products during the game next month are Volkswagen, General Motors, Toyota, Dannon, Century 21, GoDaddy.com, and Bridgestone.

While most small businesses will never get the chance to market their products during an event such as the Super Bowl, there are lessons to be learned from the experience. Among them are:

• Always be sure to reinforce your brand and/or business. While some Super Bowl messages are cute and funny, the brand sometimes gets lost in the message. Marketers want consumers to remember who they are whether it is a 30-second spot or a 60-second one. Make sure you don’t leave people guessing as to what your message is;
• Logos, web addresses, phone numbers, etc. are essential. It is important when marketing to make sure consumers have the ability to reach out to you. You can have the best product in the world, but without a way for people to reach you, what good is it? Don’t make consumers have to work to find you;
• Redefine the targeted audience – This is why surveys, reports, metrics etc. are important. Make sure you are marketing to the right demographics so that your money is well spent. If your primary market is young women, don’t spend your time marketing to middle age men in hopes that they will pass the details along to their younger offspring.

You may not be advertising during the biggest television spectacle of the year, but that doesn’t mean your marketing efforts are worthless.

Score a touchdown with the right marketing campaigns, which begin with kicking off in the right direction.

Dave Thomas, who covers among other items starting a small business and business proposals, writes extensively for Business.com, an online resource destination for businesses of all sizes to research, find, and compare the products and services they need to run their businesses.