Valuing Online and Offline Promotions (and Staying Crunchy in Milk)
Just as that plastic toy at the bottom of the cereal box isn’t going to cut it for today’s kids, neither are old-school promotional tactics. Dave Friedman, President of Avenue A/Razorfish opened the ad: tech session “Valuing Online/Offline Integrated Promotions” with an audience poll on cereal toys which set the tone for a lively speaker/panel hybrid session that managed to go over an hour without losing any momentum (or losing its crunch in milk).
Other participants included: Moderator David Herscott, Managing Director of MEA Digital; Megan O’Connor, Director of e-Commerce, Rodan and Fields; and Anthony Schneider, Co-Founder of Peersuasion.
First up was Friedman, who after his initial poll took the audience on a tour of Postopia, a fictional online world where kids can play among piles of cereal. His main message, that promotions kept in separate silos are no longer an option, is one that’s sure to strike a chord with many marketers. He also emphasized how important it is to create something engaging with strong sensory appeal: “It’s not enough to ‘promote’ across multiple channels. You need to deliver a multi-channel experience.”
Next up was Schneider, who presented a case study on a developing brand that was trying to target teens. He advised marketers to cast a wide net, enable peer-to-peer communication and product evangelism, and to use demographic and technographic targeting to help inform your efforts. Beware of trying too hard to use teen lingo, lest you be thought of as straight up wack. Or something.
O’Connor rounded out the line-up. She used the relaunch of a skincare product line as the basis for explaining the various online and offline tactics that helped this brand take shape. Major lessons learned: awareness of brand is always going to be important to driving growth, data capture is crucial to campaign success, and sampling is a great way to sell (for cosmetics, at least). The company is currently looking for a low cost way to do this online.
A Q&A session was next. Audience members asked some difficult questions which stumped some panel members, such as “How do you rule out cheapskates and those looking for a free ride?” (Answer: It’s hard). And “How do you measure the results of things that aren’t as measurable, like general PR?” (Answer: Like we said, it’s hard).
A great session and a must for any marketer looking for new promotion ideas, both online and off. Look for the ”SearchViews.com Free Cereal For Life” giveaway, coming soon. (We kid, we kid).
