Norwalk, CT-based alternative drink maker South Beach Beverage Co. this spring will trade beeps for sips in a multi-million-impression pager promotion connecting consumers with alternative events and premium offers.

Through the effort, consumers who buy SoBe products can mail in to receive a Motorola pager that will be used to alert them about local events, giveaways, and tour stops for the SoBe Love Bus sampling fleet.

The beverage company, which was scooped up by PepsiCo late last year (January PROMO), will also randomly transmit product-specific questions, with the first 1,000 correct responses earning prizes from a $250,000 pool including Chevy trucks, skateboards, surfboards, and various SoBe-branded premiums.

The campaign, which will run for 12 weeks beginning May 7, is being facilitated through promotional paging shop PageMaster Corp., Thousand Oaks, CA, and pager company Metrocall, Alexandria, VA.

SoBe, which handles most promo execution in-house under vp-marketing Bill Bishop, Jr., will support with roughly $7 million in account-specific radio spots, as well as with in-store merchandising and P-O-P efforts.

Mott’s this spring will partner with New York City-based Sesame Workshop and Sony Pictures Family Entertainment, Los Angeles, for a six-month tie-in to Dragon Tales. The effort will be the largest juice-boosting promotion in company history.

Beginning in March, Stamford, CT-based Mott’s will pepper packaging across 14 SKUs with various on-pack games, instant-win stickers, and other promotional materials. Account-specific overlays will support, along with media buys. Packages of multi-serve apple juice will sport an under-the-cap instant-win game giving away a grand-prize Dragon Tales party for 50 people. Other prizes include games, crafts, and collectable cells from the popular PBS television show.

Mott’s expects to generate more than 70 million impressions from the campaign, which will be refreshed with new packaging and promotional elements every 45 days. Ryan Partnership, Westport, CT, handles.

Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, this winter leveraged characters from Budweiser’s popular “Whassup” TV spots for promotions tied to its sponsorship of the National Basketball Association.

Last month, Bud hosted an Internet sweeps on nba.com dangling trips to this month’s NBA All-Star Game. Additional winners received Bud-branded refrigerators. A separate in-store program sent winners to the game and gave away hats and consumer electronics. P-O-P displays supported.

Meanwhile, a new Budweiser Hoops mobile tour is hitting nine NBA markets including Atlanta, Miami, New York City, Orlando, and Philadelphia. A pair of Hoops vans and trailers visit retail outlets to host “Pop a Shot” tournaments. Ten finalists in each market win tickets to a local game and Bud-branded goodies. Five finalists will be selected to try half-court shots, and will split a cash prize of as much as $250,000 depending on how many are successful. Momentum, St. Louis, handles.

Sears, Roebuck and Co., Hoffman Estates, IL, and America Online, Vienna, VA, have been giving winter shoppers the option of buying AOL Internet service at retail. Sears shoppers can sign up for AOL at checkout in 860 stores and pay with their Sears credit cards. Those who do are entered into a $100,000 Good Life sweepstakes in which five winners (one awarded each month) get $100,000 and others receive a $50 sears.com gift card. Shoppers who link AOL billing to their card score an extra pack of coupons.

Plano, TX-based Hawaiian Punch is taking teens to the movies in April. In a promotion targeted to 12- to 15-year olds, the company will offer free movie tickets plus snacks and drinks on-pack. P-O-P will support. In addition, 12-packs of the drink will offer 50-cent coupons.

Meanwhile, sister brand Dr Pepper this month begins a program offering racing fans a chance to live life in the fast lane. In a Taste for the Race instant-win game running through April, gamepieces attached to label backs and inside 12-packs alert purchasers of prizes. The grand-prize winner scores a trip to a NASCAR Busch Series race of his choice, transportation to the event by helicopter, and $10,000 cash. Second-place winners try their hand behind the wheel of a race car for eight laps. Other prizes include coolers and free soda. Proofs of purchase can be redeemed for T-shirts and die-cast car replicas. Dallas-based Firehouse handles.

Out to bump sales of new videogame ESPN Winter X Games Snowboarding, Redwood City, CA-based Konami is giving joystick jockeys the chance to square off with each other – and then against professional powder thrashers. Through a co-marketing deal with Richmond, VA-based retailer Circuit City, videogame competitions are being held at stores in 10 markets including Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Chicago through the end of February. Top scorers win a trip to the Winter X Games in Mount Snow, VT, where they battle each other. The overall winner then takes on a professional snowboarder. (Second-place winners receive a snowboard.) The campaign features more aggressive efforts “than we typically do for a game rollout,” says Chris Mike, Konami’s vp-marketing. TV and radio spots support, as do P-O-P displays in Circuit City outlets.

Howard Johnson International, Parsippany, NJ, this spring makes hotel stays extra kid-friendly with the introduction of Crayola Kids Rooms. Courtesy of a promotional partnership between the hotel operator and Easton, PA-based Binney & Smith, the rooms will boast Crayola-branded easels, lamps, alarm clock radios, videocassette players, micro-fridges, and graphics-treated walls. Families booking the rooms will receive Crayola “Kids Go HoJo Fun Packs” upon check-in.

A growing number of hotels are attempting to make themselves more kid-friendly. Last fall, Embassy Suites, Memphis, TN, struck a three-year, $20 million marketing deal with New York City-based kid’s television network Nickelodeon (January PROMO).

Warner Home Video, Burbank, CA, next month will launch yet another partner-packed effort linked to a Scooby-Doo direct-to-video release. Scooby Doo and the Ghoul School hits shelves March 6 backed by offerings from promotional partners in a multi-page coupon book packaged with the video. The Spotlight Studio Pass, as the coupon book is called, will feature $1,400 in discounts from partners including Blimpie Restaurants, Flowers USA, International House of Pancakes, Club Med, and Princess Cruises. The booklet will also house rebate offers from Samsung, FujiFilm, and Max Factor. A What is in Your Spotlight? sweeps overlay offers trips to Warner Bros. film premieres, DVD players, videos, and other merchandise. The studio adds a separate coupon of its own, a buy-three-get-one free offer for video titles.

Alltel Communications, Little Rock, AR, dialed up country singer Faith Hill for marketing support in 2001. The company late last year inked a sponsorship deal for Hill’s “Soul 2 Soul” concert tour and will activate by booking the starlet in a series of campaigns. Hill will be featured in, among other components, TV and radio spots hyping her tour as well as Alltel’s new national wireless rate plan.

San Diego-based Tower Records has begun serving online shoppers instant access to their purchases. Once they finalize a sale, shoppers at towerrecords.com can access streaming audio versions of the records they bought – provided they first open a free password-protected account. The new service is the result of a licensing agreement between the retailer and music-file portal MP3.com, San Diego.

Warner Home Video, Burbank, CA, will release Go! Exercise with the Teletubbies to video in March with a special $12.95 retail price and a comprehensive marketing campaign including magazine ads, mail-in rebates in conjunction with Scholastic books and Kid Rhino records, and a “Teletubbies Exercise Day” in more than 40,000 preschools nationwide. The effort will also be supported through a Teletubbies outreach program conducted through broadcaster PBS’s Ready to Learn.

Lyrick Studios, Allen, TX, is enticing parents to buy Barney’s latest concert video, Barney’s Musical Castle Live!, with an in-pack coupon good for up to two dollars off Procter & Gamble’s Luvs diapers, Cincinnati. The title streets on March 6 with a $14.99 retail price.

Consumers who’ve tried to avoid telemarketers by ditching their home phones and going mobile will soon have to contend with a new ringing in their ears – or more precisely, their belt loops, purses and briefcases.

Virgin E-Commerce Inc. and 19 other companies tested a new form of telemarketing this summer: outbound calls targeting consumers carrying cellular phones and alphanumeric pagers who’ve opted-in to receive the messages.

The test, which netted a 30% response rate for Virgin, used zip code and telephone area code sorts for targeting advertising text messages transmitted by Alameda, CA-based Geoworks Corp.

The messages served primarily as a way to generate traffic and sales for retail stores and Web sites. Virgin’s highest-pulling test offered consumers a free CD. Consumers had the option of claiming their disc in a Virgin retail store, at their Web site (www.virginmega.com) or by calling an 800 number.

“Response to this test was so high that we plan to come back with a more aggressive offer, hopefully in time for Christmas,” says Anne Hermann, senior marketing manager for Virgin Megastore Online.

Virgin plans to expand its direct marketing using new media. All promotions supporting retail stores and the Web site will be carefully targeted to avoid sending unwanted advertising to consumers, she says.

“We’re going to stay on the track of permission marketing and target consumers who opt-in to and ask for information, so as not to spam anyone,” Hermann says.

During the test Geoworks sent out as many as 10,000 messages daily to digital cell phones and pagers, but the company declined to release the precise number of ads transmitted for Virgin.

Geoworks also answered inbound 800 number calls generated by the tests. The company presently has eight teleservices stations at its call center in Alameda and the capacity to add additional stations.

“This is the first direct media that’s truly self-directed,” says David Grannan, CEO and president of Geoworks. “To me this is the holy grail of direct marketing.”

Consumers place themselves on lists to receive free discount promotions information by registering online at www.discopro.com. The registration process consists of answering questions enabling Geoworks to develop a personal marketing profile for each subscriber, which is enhanced with demographic and psychographic information acquired from third-party sources.

“When a subscriber signs up we collect all the typical demographic information such as their phone number, household income, education level and preferences for the kinds of offers they would like to receive,” Grannan says.

Messages were only transmitted when a promotional offer from an advertiser matched a subscriber’s marketing profile. A beep or ring alerted recipients whenever a text message arrived.

The messages function as electronic coupons redeemable in stores or online through the Internet. The Generation X target audience is typically more high-tech-oriented and less interested in clipping paper coupons than older generations, Grannan notes.

Virgin is more aggressive in testing new media technologies than other advertisers lined up by Geoworks. “We share a common vision with Virgin,” says Grannan. “When you look at the processing power of these [cell phones and pagers], they’re like little computers in your pocket.”

The market penetration of cellular phone and pagers is approaching 30%, a level electronic products typically achieve before becoming mainstream, Grannan says.

Geoworks also plans to start including graphics such as corporate logos in future teleservices promotions. But the more exciting prospect is the anticipated ability to use global positioning satellite technology linked to digital communications devices to select pedestrians for very targeted telemarketing promotions.

Cell phones and pagers introduced within 12 to 18 months will transmit exact location information to satellites, Grannan explains. That will make it possible to geographically select and target offers to customers walking near stores to generate retail traffic.

“We’ll be able to tell us where you are, whether that’s on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, the Financial District in San Francisco or somewhere else,” he says.