Prilosec OTC: NFL promotion looks to social media
Situation: Procter & Gamble has run a Prilosec OTC Super Bowl promotion for the past three years. While previous efforts were promoted via traditional media outlets, this year P&G wanted to drive brand interaction in a more cost-effective manner while testing the effectiveness of social media as a marketing tool.
Approach: The Prilosec OTC Winning Play Giveaway campaign ran online from December 15 to January 15. Consumers who played had the chance to win prizes instantly and were entered to win a grand prize of tickets to the Super Bowl game.
Consumers could return as many times as they wished during the month, but play only once per day. Players had to register, which meant answering several questions about heartburn and the promotion.
“We wanted to make [the sweepstakes] very simple,” says Matt Champion, senior assistant brand manager, Prilosec OTC. “The instant win element was a simple embodiment of the benefits of Prilosec OTC” which enables people to live their lives without worrying about heartburn, he continues.
The sweepstakes was promoted via a widget that sports-related bloggers and consumers could place on their own Web sites.
“Word of mouth was the driver of this,” says Ken Zinn, digital marketing manager, Prilosec OTC.
Prilosec’s newsletter, Web site and search engine marketing were also used to build awareness.
Agencies involved in the program include ePrize, imc2, MS&L and Riber Sports Marketing Group.
Results: Prilosec OTC received just under 2 million media impressions from the campaign. The game had hundreds of thousands of players, which is “unprecedented compared with what we did previously,” according to Zinn.
More than 70% of the entrants were frequent heartburn sufferers and received a sample of Prilosec OTC.
-Chantal Todé
Bob Bridge Toyota: Car dealership drives ad costs
Situation: Bob Bridge Toyota of Seattle launched a test program with AdReady in early 2007 to drive traffic to its Web site while keeping ad costs down. The application provides a library of customizable, field-tested advertisements as well as tools for measuring the effectiveness of ads using impressions and click-through rates. The flash banner and display ads used by Bob Bridge were geo-targeted to Seattle-based users via their ISP addresses and linked back to the dealership’s Web site.
Results: Monthly Web site visits increased by 94% in the first three months and service appointments made online increased by 50%.
-Mary Hurn
Shark Euro-Pro: DRTV mops up with SEM
Approach: Shark Euro-Pro tapped SendTec last fall to create a DRTV piece for its Shark Steam Mop. SendTec also used search engine marketing to catch those consumers who remembered a keyword from the ad and went searching for the item online.
“We are careful to manage search so as not to compete against the branded keywords being purchased by big box retailers that sell Shark products online,” says Jeff Frankel, VP, international and direct-to-consumer sales at Shark Euro-Pro. “Our search strategy is to bid on the longer tail of search.”
Results: While Internet response rates previously topped out at 15% for Shark’s infomercials, this one reached 33%.
-Nathan Golia
Privateview
Rene Lehouillier, executive creative director, OgilvyOne
Prilosec OTC uses classic sweepstakes/borrowed interest creative. People always want a chance to win something. But rather than Brett Favre, it might have been more apt to use a losing quarterback. They give fans more heartburn. Can’t argue with the results on the Bob Bridge Toyota campaign. However, I think the ad service company should change its name from AdReady to AdDeady. It’s quite boring. Imagine how much better more compelling creative would have performed. And we thought Ronco was dead. I can see customers wanting a product that would steam clean their floor and sanitize it at the same time but I am not told this benefit at all with the Shark Euro-Pro work. I have a price and payment plan. Not a reason to “act now.”
