Your brand is asset-laden. It had better be. Otherwise, truth is, you don’t have a brand.
Enter the notion of asset leverage. In today’s tight-margin, tight-budget competitive arena, smart marketers know that one way to make their promotional offering rise above the crowd is to leverage their brand’s assets.
Assets aren’t always obvious. The little cap that seals your product packaging can be converted into a revealing gamepiece. Your advertising platform can be crafted into a promotional offering. Got a celebrity? Bingo. You’ve got an asset – unless the Agency neglected to negotiate a buyout contract that includes promotional usage.
The Milk people sit atop a wellspring of celebrity. Almost everybody who is anybody has posed for the now famous Milk Moustache campaign. Dairy Management, Inc. has heretofore tapped into this asset with the usual promotional suspects, like calendars and posters. But their latest venture is a brilliant example of asset leverage.
This first-ever, industry-wide under-the-cap promotion is called the Fame Game. It borrows interest from Dairy Management’s stable of celebrities and plays off the universal appeal of “being somebody.” Under every cap is a peel-off gamepiece which, at a minimum, unveils a collectable celebrity photo. Better than a “Sorry, try again” slogan, eh? Millions of caps will reveal instant-win celebrity prizes, and the grand prize is the opportunity to appear in Milk advertising and become a star, along with a year’s worth of appropriate benefits.
Will this promotion help convert beverage category users to milk? Who knows? Nothing else has. But give Milk high marks for extracting the most bang from its promotional buck.
Have you conducted a full-scale Brand Asset Audit lately?
BURYING THE TRUTH WON’T HIDE IT
Sometimes, marketers find it necessary to disguise a weakness in their promotional offer – one which likely traces to budget constraints. It’s the “can’t-afford-to-do-it-right-let’s-do-it-anyway” syndrome.
The sweepstakes is the universal tactic of the budget-impaired. But why let it become de-motivating? McDonald’s current $1,000,000 Monopoly game is a cool event, except that, after consumers are lured to the store, they discover that they can only play when they purchase “selected items.” Breakfast customers? Let them eat McMuffin.
WHO D’YA THINK YER FOOLIN’?
Promotion gets a bad rap when advertisers talk to prospects as if they were ignoramuses. Priceline.com advertises: “Save up to Half Off Groceries,” with “up to” in tiny type. Perdue offers a “2-for-1 Royal Caribbean Cruise” for purchasing a couple of chicken breasts.
Then there’s the old “50% Off Sale” as currently touted by Olympia Sporting Goods. What they really mean is 50 percent off your second item, which at best is a 25 percent-off sale. C’mon gang, shoppers know when it sounds too good to be true.
BOOKING SCHEMES
It’s the peak travel season, and hoteliers want your business. So much so that they’re offering exciting incentives. If you choose AmeriSuites, for example, you get to enter their sweepstakes every time you stay. Excited yet? No? Then how about Best Western’s offer of a free disposable camera? Compare those to Radisson’s deal: Stay three times and get another stay free – guess who wins?
UPGRADE, DOWNGRADE
Under the arresting headline, “Fly British Airways and we guarantee you’ll fly with us again,” lies a strong promotion incentive – free tickets. But there are caveats: The offer is only available to a “new member” of the Executive Club (a pox on you current members). Plus, only Business Class travelers qualify to participate. And reward for being one of those upscale customers is . . . Economy Class tickets, which aren’t even upgradable at any price. Thus, the bipolar promotion – manic headline followed by depressive offer.
You can’t make this stuff up, it’s the truth.
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