Publisher Little, Brown’s young reader division is partnering with a teen service organization to get readers involved with the worthy social cause of their choice, using the contest-based SugarLoot Web site as a portal.
Until May 26, teens are being asked to submit their 60-second video suggestions for helping the environment to sugarloot.com/maxride. The winnerwill get to appear in a public-service announcement produced by Do Something and featuring the band Fall Out Boy.
The campaign is designed to promote the latest book in the eco-based young-adult “Maximum Ride” series by James Patterson. Little, Brown is requiring that the PSA submissions include one of four lines referring to the latest book in the series, “The Final Warning,” or to its characters.
Visitors to the SugarLoot contest site can vote on the submissions until May 27. Little, Brown will then choose a winner from the top 10 popular vote-getters based on originality and adherence to the contest theme.
The grand-prize winner will get a chance to have his or her idea turned into a professionally produced PSA with a celebrity spokesperson, a trip to New York or Los Angeles to watch the spot being filmed, and a chance to appear in the video.
The PSA will then be aired in schools nationwide on the Channel One Network. Do Something will also award the contest winner $500 that can be contributed to a favorite charity.
The “Maximum Ride” series chronicles the adventures of Max Ride and her flock of half-human, half-bird friends as they protect the global environment.
The SugarLoot Web site is a teen-targeted contest site operating by Alloy Media + Marketing as part of its Teen.com channel. Alloy will promote the “Maximum Ride” contest through e-mail to SugarLoot’s database of registered teen consumers. Entrants can also forward the contest to friends through tools built into the site. Launched in 2007, SugarLoot.com received 790,000 unique visitors in January 2008, according to comScore Media Metrix.
The promotion will also get support on the Web site for Do Something.org and on that group’s popular MySpace and Facebook pages.
“This is an exciting partnership that takes Maximum Ride off the print pages and even further into the online realm where we know teens live and breathe,” said Andrew Smith, marketing vice president and associate publisher at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, in a statement.
“Little, Brown is connecting with their readers in a new space, in a new way and offering participants an exciting opportunity and the type of exposure and immediate response they crave,” said Alloy executive vice president Samantha Skey.
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