I love being psychic... Thanks Alice.

A few days ago I posted this... in which I said, "I received my first order 4 days. Everything I ordered was in the box, intact and great. In-pack sampling, however, I hope is something they start doing." And then, this is what I found on facebook today. "Alice.com announces free samples + win a Mac Book! - http://bit.ly/Kvtu0".

Seriously, I'm psychic. Go check out the link.

Common Sense from Scott...

As marketers we all may sometimes fall victim to overthinking things sometimes. So, on occasion, tts nice to see a simple promotion for a simple category.

Introducing Scott's Common Sense promotion. Check it out here.



Premise: See in-store materials or FSI, go to website, submit a tip that your mother told you, have a chance to win $25,000. I discovered the promo in-store on a Smartsource Banner. (I've been behind on my coupon clipping and missed the FSI which dropped mid May).

Once at the website, consumers are greeted with perfectly expected experience. The site is full of polls, tips, community, submit a tip and win, etc... Navigation is intuitive and feels like the other sites that their consumers are probably used to. Color palette is soft and soothing (2 good things to associate with toliet paper). Overall, this is easy.

I played on the site a bit, and then was pleasantly (as a marketer), surprise when I left. After closing the site, I was served a little pop up.

"hey, you interested in filling out a survey", said the little pop-up. "you could win $250".





See, when submitting tips for the sweepstakes, they asked for bear minimum information. They simply want to drive participation. Then for those interested, when served the pop-up, you can fill out a rather extensive survey which asked all kinds of demo, brand and category questions. A treasure trove of data for a little re-marketing later.

Now, I'm not sure what Morgan's take will be on this, he's the online guy. But as a retail to web promotion, this worked for me. Easy to understand in-store proposition drove to a web experience that was comfortable and easy. While not every brand should do comfortable and easy, its exactly what I want from my toliet paper.

Retail to Web Made Easy?

Per my last 2 posts, we can see there is obviously a growing amount of retail to web communication going on in-store. And now, as released last week, Catalina and ePrize are taking it to the next level. Through a strategic partnership, they are coming to market with all-in-one solutions for these programs. Catalina has vast data (which I love) on who buys what, how often and where, a treasure trove of shopper nuggets. ePrize has 101 templatized ways to create and online promotion quick and easy. Together they bring rich targeting capabilities at retail on the front end with strong engagement tools and data capture potential on the backend. And while it may not all be done in one phone call, it’ll be pretty turnkey. Check out the current Dole Salad/Yahoo Music/Elliot Yamin (former American Idoler) promo. (and yes, the song sucks, but that's not the point) Another solution this provides is for the constant problem of unique codes on package which take months of planning to execute due to production timelines. Now you can simply have Catalina trigger an ad when a shopper buys your product and they can be given a unique code which can tell what SKU was purchased and at what retailer. Great info to have as soon as they go online and enter it. The executional fixes and promotional opportunities are all still to be fully explored, but its exciting/scary.

Everybody Likes a Pizza Party

Its true...and Schwan Foods is counting on it driving traffic to their web promotion from retail. Using their entire portfolio of frozen pizza brands (Freschetta, Red Baron and Tony’s), they are driving traffic to pizzapartypro.com for the chance to win the “ultimate party” including a party planner, day spa treatment, party day attire, digital camera and a flat panel hdtv.

They had three placements in the frozen aisle including a floorgraphic in front of the Red Baron pizza along with a shelftalk, then further down the aisle was another shelftalk in front of the Freshetta. While the “Party Like a Pro” sweeps was carried through all, the individual placements also maintain the equity of each brand.



The site itself is really really basic; a couple party tips, sweeps info and an entry mechanism. The engagement online could have certainly been more compelling, but the traffic driving vehicles in-store showed a commitment to store as a medium. The fact that they invested in 3 placements and had absolutely no sell messaging, but instead simply used retail as a medium to drive awareness of their online promotion is impressive.

Healthy Choice - Retail to Web

Since we all sit around talking about in-store as a medium, not a sales tool, it’s nice to see it used for something other than simply trying to drive sales lift. Healthy Choice currently is running an interesting in-store drive to web promotion. The main window of the shelftalk pushes the current promotion “START MAKING CHOICES” which drives you to web to “get your personalized health and wellness tools at healthychoice.com.”

Beyond that, the outer extension is pushing other portfolio products, namely their Healthy Choice soups. Obviously their frozen offering is their marquee product… so they are harnessing their equity there to drive awareness of other extensions as well as create an online experience. This is in-store as a medium; its driving awareness as well as push to web. Oh, and to date, the website currently boasts over 35,000 people who have signed up to "START MAKING CHOICES"!

The omni-present Sunsilk

Thought I would start this thing off with the on-going case study of Sunsilk which I'm sure many of you have probably heard of, seen on TV or seen in-store.

My interest in Sunsilk began when I came across them in-store with a series of humorous cross category placements far from the hair care aisle in both grocery and mass. When they launched this campaign they viewed the store truly as a medium capitalizing on the reach of the whole store, not just the HABA categories. Placements ran near soda, ice cream, laundry and so on, all with contextually relevant messages that brought the brand's fun, humorous personality to life.

While this intrigued me, I was more impressed as I began to dig deeper and see how the in-store leg of the campaign worked so well within the broader media mix.

As I am not an 18-34 year old female, I haven't seen a ton of their TV, but by all accounts, most young women have. Along with a ton of national magazines, in-theater ads and online media, the TV rounded out a compelling campaign which had roots in a larger idea. A non-traditional idea for the category certainly. The brand is the star of the spots, this fun, clever persona which they created takes center stage, not Hair. There aren't dramatic slow mo shots of hair being flipped about present in any of the ads.

The last piece of the campaign, and the goal of much of the communication was a drive online to http://www.gethairapy.com, the brands site. After some initial intro which set up the tone not only for the site but the brand, the first thing I noticed were the two promo modules on
the homepage, one for a free sample and one for a sweeps. While there is certainly plenty of content around the site to keep users around for a while (video, blog, advice etc...), they didn't completely disguise there intentions... get a free sample, enter a sweeps, we are incenting you interact with us and our brand.

While I don't find my hair to be particularly in need of special care, I signed up under the free sample section and was met a few weeks later with a nice DM piece with my sample and a couple other fun things which again illustrating the playfullness of the brand and typically driving you back online to the site.

Overall, this started in-store, but through that I stumbled on to a very interesting and well glued-together wholistic campaign.

Subsequently, now out of the launched phase, they have evolved there in-store strategy with stronger purchase drivers. Currently they are now more focused in the hair care aisle with banners bookending the product and a coupon machine to drive trial.

Final bits...

1. In terms of non-traditional, I don't know the category
tremendously well, but I find it interesting that their spokespeople
are three men...no hair models.

2. Integration, integration, integration...they do a great job
of maintaining consistency of message, look and feel accross all
their vehicles, but, they don't neccessarily try and do everything
everywhere. For example, we never see the spokespeople in-store,
but the same humor is used.

Strange side note:
I'm not sure if its a new Unilever thing, but I saw another
out of category placement today at Safeway for Suave in the laundry
aisle. Interestingly, its the second Unilever brand in the past
couple months to put hair care in the laundry aisle.