THE GLOBAL COLOR VOTE IS A LESSON IN DEMOCRACY
If the State of Florida was even half as organized as the M&M's marketing team, Al Gore might be in the White House.
Polls for the Global Color Vote opened on March 6 through mms.com (in more than 15 languages), a toll-free hotline, kiosks in participating retailers, and the mail. Specially marked packages contain samples of the nominees: pink, purple, and blue. M&M's first global project took two years to develop and boasts unified advertising (via BBDO, New York City), p.r. (Porter Novelli, also New York), direct, retail, sponsorship, and online components.
The polls close May 31 with the winning color announced June 19 at a Manhattan event. The winner begins a three-month reign in August, supported by a Global Cash instant-win game awarding prizes to consumers who find their bags filled only with the winning color. A $1.5 million prize pool will announce cash in world currencies, but pay out in U.S. dollars; top prize is 100 million yen (about $750,000).
The mms.com site underwent severe load-testing before the launch, at one point undergoing the equivalent of thousands of simultaneous vote tabulations. “No program I've ever worked on has been under such scrutiny,” says Brent Shedd, management supervisor with Grey Interactive, New York City, which handles the site.
The U.S. home page houses games, printable campaign flyers and buttons (for grassroots stumping), and e-mail “Color Splats” users send to friends to lobby for their candidates. The Vote is being used to unveil a redesigned mms.com (developed from a central template created by Grey) in many countries. D.L. Blair, Garden City, NY (a DraftWorldwide unit), handles administration.
Packaging, merchandising materials, and signage were manufactured for all three colors so the right materials can be shipped quickly once all the votes have been tallied. “We're making pink, purple, and blue everything,” says Joe Zucconi, senior vp-account supervisor with handling agency TJ Paul, Rydal, PA. “Things will happen rather quickly once the winner is announced in June.”
Masterfoods offices around the world will conduct local executions. The company will decide later if the winner scores permanent placement alongside green, red, yellow, brown, orange, and blue — the last of which was added in 1995 through a U.S.-only Color Campaign that generated 10.2 million votes, delivered a 10-percent sales lift, and downed phone lines in two states.
“We've warned the phone companies this time,” says M&M vp-marketing Mark Mattia.
