Blanketing the Beach

In the span of a month, beach locales such as Panama City and Daytona in Florida, South Padre Island in Texas, as well as offshore hotspots like Cancun and the islands of the Caribbean will swell with invading spring breakers who descend on these resort areas to find relief from academic life.

In advance of the youthful crowds come the marketers. Specialists in the art and science of wowing 18- to 24-year-olds, all in the name of a brand, they will be out in force for Spring Break 2006.

The season, which traditionally starts in March and pinches a part of April, presents marketers with prime opportunities to introduce products and services, and lay the groundwork for follow up contacts. But the schedule is about as far as tradition extends this year.

In the past, an arsenal of free product samples, promotional tents, banners, posters, stickers and product demonstrations seemed to cut it. But college students are increasingly cognizant of their role as a target market, and so promotional marketers have had to play smarter. The ideal Spring Break campaign? Maximum relevance with the maximum size audience.

“What really works for us is our tactic of touch points,” says Pete D’Andrea, VP-sponsorship and events for New York City-based Alloy Media+Marketing. “We have a presence on the beach and we also have sponsors of club concerts. We not only do daytime promotions, but our promotions are ongoing by integrating the message in the whole [Spring Break] experience,” he says.

Last year, Alloy wrapped hotel elevator doors to look like showers for Unilever’s Axe deodorant. Shower curtains in select hotel rooms were also branded.

When students ventured out to soak up sun in Panama City Beach, FL, they were greeted with “zorbs,” 15-foot high transparent balls steered along the beach by a single student inside them. Each zorb was branded for Dreamworks’ movie The Island as part of an Alloy campaign.

This year, Alloy will place client names on just about anything during students’ stay. The list includes hotel pillows, keycards, drinking glasses and napkins. And yet, with everyone’s name on something, the clutter leaves agencies scrambling to achieve the “wow” factor.

“We want to do something cool that we know people would probably never see again in their life,” D’Andrea says.

Top of the music bill

Music has emerged as a clear-cut winner to attract large Spring Break crowds with nothing on their minds, but fun. What was once the stronghold of MTV, VH-1 and BET (renowned for its “Spring Bling” music events at Daytona Beach, FL), has been co-opted by the majority of agencies playing at the beaches.

Companies can draw Spring Break audiences to sponsored live concerts, branded club parties, and more. Brands can also tailor music toward the segment of the market they are desperate to reach, says Victor Jones, VP-alliance and entertainment for The Marketing Store, an agency with offices in Chicago and New York City.

“There are a number of brands that want to reach the hip hop and R&B audience, while others are trying to reach a particular sub-segment of the market,” Jones says.

Live concerts aren’t the only way to leverage music this year, as the popularity of free downloadable music cards skyrockets. Last year, several companies branded free music cards, then tactfully pushed the fans to Web sites where students could earn more downloads. This year, the number of brands dealing the cards is likely to be even higher.

“Integrating music whether sponsoring a concert or giving away free iTune downloads or ring tones are high touch points for brands during spring break,” says Matt Britton, managing partner at New York City-based Mr. Youth LLC.

With music as ubiquitous as tanning lotion during Spring Break, however, Jones warns that brands normally viewed as conservative may come across as being fake or too commercial if they try to be falsely hip with student crowds.

Branding a destination

Destinations are also being branded so that they are in the forefront of students’ minds come reservation time.

For instance, Mr. Youth has been AOR for Panama City Beach for three years, charged with drawing crowds to the Florida site. Many of the 400,000 students who come receive messages about the spot well before the season. A campus marketing effort includes print, online and guerilla marketing methods.

This year, 1 million Panama City Beach (PCB06) destination guides are being distributed to college newspapers and campus outlets across the nation.

A podcast at pcb06.com is also available to spring breakers for information on the latest events and hot spots. In addition, a 15-campus promotional tour with contests and giveaways helps spread the word about the location.

Other municipalities have jumped on the bandwagon, as city officials sign agencies with strong Spring Break experience to turn out the kids. Visitor bureaus prepare for the influx while merchants sell T-shirts, caps, mugs and other items bearing the location’s name. (You try staring all semester at a mug and not spark fond memories.)

Is it worth it?

When the sun sets on the season, students retreat back to campuses hopefully with fond impressions of a few favored brands on their minds. Marketers’ minds, however, buzz with questions: Was it all worth it? Is Spring Break really the mega-branding opportunity it’s made out to be?

Actually, yes. According to a 2004 College Explorer study conducted by 360 Youth and Harris Interactive, 65% of students who attended Spring Break plan to purchase an item following a sponsor’s demo.

A response like that means marketers can justify their time at the beach. And with their return on investment secure, they’ll be back again next year.

Lights, Camera, Party

The Travel Channel is already prepping for next year’s Spring Break. The network is sending a film crew to South Padre Island, TX, to shoot a documentary slated for March 2007.

The crew will spend three weeks witnessing South Padre transform from a sleepy town of 3,000 to a raucous playground for 17,000 college students. Shooting will wrap up the week of March 12, dubbed “Texas Week,” since that state’s schools go on break then.

The lens will be turned on marketers, too. “Marketing is one piece of [the Spring Break scene], but they control so much of what happens. We want to see them putting together all these events—the competitions, concerts, sand castles,” says Nina Weinstein, executive producer for Discovery Production Group. “Are they all competing for their patch of sand?”

It’s a travel story, though, not a marketing story, so Weinstein is also asking, “How will small-town law enforcement make sure 17,000 kids get home safely? There’s one bridge into town; how do they handle that? We’re hoping some of the characters we hang out with will be interesting, and we’ll get dramatic storylines.”

The six-part series comes from Discovery Production Group, the seven-month-old in-house production arm of Discovery Networks, which owns the Travel Channel (and 13 other cable networks, including Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, TLC and FitTV). The production company’s first work aired last month on the Travel Channel and FitTV, a five-hour documentary of nine overweight people on a cruise with fitness trainers.

Compared to that, the Spring Break gig is a walk on the beach.
— Spethmann