PROMO’s sweet tooth was acting up as we toured our local Super Stop & Shop to measure promotional activity in the candy aisle.

As expected, we found scores of programs from the usual suspects. Here’s a quick look:

• Hackettstown, NJ-based Masterfoods USA’s M&M/Mars did it all, running both brand-specific programs and umbrella efforts. Skittles ran an instant-win game featuring a prize pool filled with 100 cars (“some classics, some clunkers”) that launched last year. Snickers had a Scooby Doo-bedecked “Mystery Window” on-pack game handing out $5, $50, or $100 to winners. Starburst heralded the umbrella Hit the Code, Win the Cash effort, which sends users online and ends next month.

  The flagship M&M brand offered two choices: Packaging for the 9.4-ounce SKU featured the new Global Color Vote that officially kicks off this month (see “Campaign Trail”); 21.3-ounce bags of peanut M&Ms had red, white, and blue candies inside and packaging offering donations to the American Red Cross.

• Hershey, PA-based Hershey Food Corp. ran a Check Before You Chew instant-win game on Ice Breakers gum hyping a grand-prize BMW Z3 roadster. Carefree gum had in-pack coupons for future purchases, and Hot Cinnamon Ice Breakers served up the aisle’s only self-liquidating offer — Big Dog boxer shorts for $3.99 and four UPCs.

  Some of Hershey’s offers were also old hat: Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups still carried last year’s Halloween alliance with Sony PlayStation 2 (which put game booklets in-pack). And tear-pads from a multi-brand National Football League continuity effort that expired Jan. 15 were still available.

• Among Glendale, CA-based Nestlé USA’s offerings were images from long-time licensing partner The Simpsons on Butterfinger and Butterfinger BB’s, and a Sweet Seats with Shaq instant-win game (in conjunction with the National Basketball Association) on Crunch chocolate bars doling out tickets and a meeting with the Los Angeles Lakers star.

• Morris Plains, NJ-based Warner-Lambert, meanwhile, chimed in with a tie to New York City-based Nickelodeon’s Jimmy Neutron on Trident For Kids gum (with packages featuring a call-out for tridentforkids.nick.com). And Certs multi-packs featured $1 instant-coupons.

• Somerset, NJ-based Fererro USA’s Tic-Tacs delivered the only continuity program — well, the only non-expired one. The Incredible Stuff 2 program offers branded merchandise in exchange for points earned with purchase; single packs direct participants to tictacpoints.com, while multi-packs house little catalogs.

Elsewhere, the store featured a multitude of company-specific candy dispensers: three from Hershey, four from Nestlé, and five from M&M. A dispenser carrying M&M’s Snickers included pictures of the candy and Coca-Cola bottles with copy reading, “Grab and Enjoy.”

So we did.

Elite Chocolate got teenagers in Israel to spread the word about its new larger-sized Mekupelet XL candy SKU by using innovative technology that got them to talk up the brand online.

Israeli teens are a tough crowd to impress when it comes to technology. All Israelis aged 18 and older are required to serve time in the national army (three years for men, 20 months for women). So the bulk of the country’s younger generation is exposed to some of the most advanced, cutting-edge technology the world has to offer before they even graduate from college.

The nation’s marketers are always looking for new and improved ways to reach this vital demographic — which is quite a challenge, considering that approximately 50 percent of the Israeli population is under 25. “It’s part of our spirit to be the first to know everything,” says Naftali Yechilzuke, creative director of Yalla-Active Marketing, a promotion agency based in Tel-Aviv. “This makes us want to explore everything hi-tech, including the Internet and all that it offers.”

The NASDAQ stock market decline and the demise of so many dot-com companies hasn’t passed by Israel, “and the political and security issues in the Middle East have caused most marketers to step back and think about how to use the Internet to their best advantage,” says Yechilzuke. The key, he says, is “finding effective methods to turn surfers into customers.”

Yalla used the Internet and radio to help Elite create buzz for its large-sized SKU with kids 16 to 25. The theme was, “Look for the XL.” On bu99fm, the leading radio station for teens, DJs played the brand’s jingle at random times, prompting listeners to call to answer a question about the brand for a chance to win a round-trip vacation for three to Amsterdam to see British pop star Robbie Williams in concert.

On the Internet, the campaign took a different approach. “Our prior attempts to promote our clients’ brands on the Web taught us that Israeli surfers are very spoiled. They jump around and never click on banner ads. For that reason, online ad campaigns can be a real waste of money,” says Yechilzuke. “We knew we had to try something they had never seen before, something that would seize their attention and drive them to action.”

Technology developed by Oak Interactive, Tel Aviv, did the trick. Elite licensed Oak software called JumpAd and took it to the place Israeli teens frequent most: chat rooms. As teens talked back and forth, animation floated periodically across the screen with the message, “Don’t run, there are prizes, click here!” The animation was timed to appear randomly, with only a specific number of people viewing them at any given time.

After clicking on the image, teens were delivered to the Elite home page, where they answered a question about the product. Correct answers earned points that corresponded to such prizes as candy and music CDs. The person who collected the most points won the Amsterdam trip.

“Our greatest achievement was that the snack and the campaign turned out to be the hottest topic on the Web among our target, says Yechilzuke. The promotion became a topic of conversation in the chat rooms, with participants tracking the real-time whereabouts of the animation and critiquing campaign elements (some liked the accompanying music, while others found it distracting).

As is true with chocolate, however, success can be bittersweet: The promotion generated such a strong response that Elite’s servers crashed, shutting down the promotion for a full day until capacity could be expanded.

The JumpAd animation received more than 1.8 million impressions, with 69,000-plus different teens clicking on (for a 3.8 percent response rate) and 1,500 registering to play. The winner, an 18-year-old girl, submitted more than 23,000 correct answers. (Yalla-Active had run a campaign for another client that limited the number of per-person entries and found it less effective, Yechilzuke says.)

“We don’t know if the campaign turned the surfers into customers,” says Yechilzuke. “But we do know that the promotion brought them closer to the brand, succeeded in raising awareness for the new product, and strengthened the bond between the snack and the target audience.”

Sounds like a sweet deal.

Amie Smith reports on international news. Reach her at [email protected].