The Big Picture

Using Social Media to build long lasting relationships with your customers

We write this post partly in response to an interesting article we read on PromoMarketing's website and partly to offer our thoughts on using promotions in Social Media.

We've mentioned before our rather scathing attitude towards the phenomenon of brands just trying to accumulate as many likes and follows as possible, which we regard as confusing faux popularity with brand engagement. However, there have been one or two promotional campaigns utilising Social Media, e.g. Ocean Spray's Bounce Your Berry, which have been exclusively Facebook-based and have proved extremely effective.

The main point of the Promotional Marketing article was the assertion that creative promotions stimulate engagement, which we heartily agree with. In social media terms they are fast to implement, relatively cost-effective and great for motivating individuals to do your marketing for you. They also cite 3 consumer types which you should consider: the self-explanatory 'spectators', 'joiners' and 'creators'.

Whilst they alude to it with the 'creators' category, we actually think that this sub-division is the most important target group and where the majority of effort should be focused. Malcolm Gladwell in his famous book, 'The Tipping Point', refers to the 'law of the few'. The basic theory is that 20% of the people do 80% of the work in making an idea go viral. They are categorised as Connectors, Mavens and Salespeople - people that draw people together, people that acquire deep knowledge on every subject and people that are naturally able to sell. Seth Godin takes the concept further in his book 'Unleashing the Ideavirus' which talks about harnessing the power of 'promiscuous sneezers' and 'powerful sneezers'.  

Promiscuous sneezers people who can be bought by a variety of inducements and are not held in high esteem as opinion formers - but if they're promiscuous enough they can be a very useful ally. They'd even share their grandmother if it got them entry into a prize draw.

Powerful sneezers are extremely influential and held in high esteem and (in theory) can't be bought. If it was known that they were being bought they would lose their credibility and hence influence. (B-list celebs do it all the time).

Now if you embark on a Social Media campaign, we would confidently suggest that the majority of people that are proactively using these services are sneezers of one sort or another. Indeed the casually promiscuous sneezers fall into the category that we highlighted at the beginning of this article, namely people who are following and liking everything in their path if there is a prize draw or discount in it for their trouble.

So your social media campaign MUST bear both categories of sneezer in mind and treat them accordingly.

Here are some techniques which will help you harness the power of Social media sneezers:

1) Make it relevant

Think of your brand personality, your product, what people perceive you as. Whatever form your campaign takes, it must reflect your personality and enhance that perception with your target audience.

2) Encourage viral seeding

The cornerstone of spreading a virus is to make it easy, appealing and rewarding to do so. Your campaign treat, freebie or offer must be easily (and ideally engagingly) shareable. Think: apps that make an amusing video or image using your uploaded photo or a game that enhances your brand personality (see Doritos for examples). Reward the promiscuous with extra entries for the more people they refer, a bigger discount, an extra free gift. Always make it very easy to share your efforts. The promiscuous types are going to shout about any little extras they earn. They yearn for this validation / attention.

3) Get the Edge - don't let up after starting your Facebook campaign

It's tempting to think that creating a FB promo and setting up the prizes, or whatever, is the end of the story. To mis-quote the Jim'll Fix it Song - your effort was only the start of it. Promotional Marketing makes passing reference to Facebook's EdgeRank. EdgeRank determines what appears on your news feed when you sign in to Facebook. So, it's a very important part of getting your campaign message across and motivating sneezers.

An Edge, as far as Facebook is concerned, is every interaction you make whilst on Facebook - every like, every photo uploaded, every status update creates an edge. EdgeRank uses an algorithm to determine the order of news items on your Facebook feed based on Affinity (how friendly you are with the entity you interacted with), Edge Weight (some events like a photo, have more of an edge than just 'liking' something*) and Recency (or time decay - the older the less relevant without being ageist of course). We'll focus on EdgeRank in more detail below.

4) Don't lose momentum

It's easy to get complacent and stop when you've reached a target number of Likes etc. but your Social Media equity can soon plunge like a black day on the stock market. You wouldn't just stop talking to real friends just because you've got enough so why do it to your virtual friends?

Predictably there are plenty of services out there that will help you get your brand up the EdgeRank and make your marketing efforts work harder for you. EdgeRankChecker was the top result in Google last time we checked!

But, if you prefer a more hands-on approach, here are some Top Tips to make your Social Media activity create a buzz and give you the edge on EdgeRank.

• Increase affinity with your fans before a campaign / launch to increase your presence on their news feed - create some teasers, start a debate, ask questions related to your brand etc - Where, When, Why and Would are a good place to start
• Post Games, Apps and Trivia - these score highly on EdgeRank
• Interact with fans - respond to them, start conversations
• Upload relevant Photos, videos or use Wall Sapplets (polls, coupons, etc) all of which rank higher than regular posts
• Time is of the essence - determine when most of your fans tend to login to their accounts and start interacting with you then time your posts accordingly to be top of their news feed (if your EdgeRank is healthy of course). Also, make your activity time-sensitive and make a big fuss of building up to the event as well as during and after!
• Use Links in your posts - they may rank lower than photos or videos but links can still encourage engagement and do have an impact on objects overall EdgeRank
• Spell it Out clearly - apart from in teaser campaigns where cryptic is the name of the game, if you want your fans to take a particular action, tell them what to do. Research by Buddy Media found that fans follow instructions well. The simpler the better. 

Conclusion

Like most aspects of marketing, forewarned is forearmed. It's all very well doing a big, expensive, glitzy promotion, but it won't fulfil its potential if you don't pay attention to the details, the build up and keeping the dialogue ongoing, fresh and interesting. Every penny counts when you're putting together a social media campaign so you have to make sure every effort is as effective as possible. Go and start spreading those Sneezes!

* See! We told you gettings Likes on Facebook isn't all it's cracked up to be!

Creating and Building your brand Personality - Don't be Bland, be a standout Brand!

Creating a point of difference, attracting like-minded customers and creating a cultural buzz around your brand are compelling reasons for developing a bit of personality. Well-defined character traits, style, attitude etc should underpin and define everything you do whether it's your communications, design, company ethics, promotional offering/mechanic and the brands, causes or celebrities you choose to associate with. 

So, where do you get your personality from?

Nature: Where does anyone get their personality from? Part of it is driven by the very nature of your product or the reason behind a product's inception in the first place. Clearly if you have an established brand there will be certain characteristics inherent in your name already. If you like those characteristics then that is a ready platform to build on. If not, or the character has fallen behind the times it is still possible to re-brand or relaunch. (e.g. McDonald's dropping Ronald McDonald for the hipper "I'm Loving It" vibe)

Nurture: Part of the personality is driven by traits that would appeal to your target audience. For banking / Insurance you want security, dependability and trust but for a children's snack brand anarchy, irreverence and boldness will push the right buttons.

How can the personality manifest?

• A Physical Character: literally embodying the brand or logo e.g. Peperami Animal, Churchill Dog, Andrex Puppies and the inevitable Meerkat.
• Communications: from packaging and point of sale through to YouTube and even in-flight announcements.
• Your ethos: practise what you preach. If you're positioning is all about health, fairness and sustainability this should be reflected in your supply chain, how you work with your suppliers.
• Promotional mechanics: how a consumer participates in your promotion is enhanced if it plays on your brand's characteristics - say a heat and reveal on a hot beverage, using a bottle cap for a free swim - or Schwim Caps as they were known
• Collaborations: you might consider a cheeky brand ambassador like Gary Lineker or a hot tie up with Spotify. You gain kudos, respect and appeal by association.
• Causes: The most obvious example is McVities Penguin, who have made a long term commitment to P..P..Protect the Penguin. They've featured associations with WWF and offered Penguin Adoptions as an instant win.
• Sponsorship: A handy option, but by no means exclusively, for those brands or services which are less glamourous, haven't got presence on supermarket shelves or other avenue for expressing themselves or they just plain ain't allowed to by law. We're talking financial services, furniture, mobile networks etc.
• Social Networks: These many and varied channels can perform spectacularly if done properly and hey, they've got all the tools you need right there to get started straight away. Posting photos, videos, regular commentary, engaging with consumers, apps, games, promotions. It's all possible. BUT, and it's a big BUTT, your social media strategy shouldn't be planned lightly. If you start it, you need to apportion the resources to keep it going. Nothing looks worse than a Twitter feed or a Facebook page which hasn't been updated 2 months. Cheaply earned Likes and Follows count for nothing if you don't keep the consumer engaged.

Here are a few of our favourite brand personalities...

Innocent's humour, friendliness and enthusiasm is plain for everyone to see. Their stunningly simple promotion The Big Knit will have raised a total of over £1 million for Age by the end of this year's campaign. It engages consumers, creates stand-out on shelf and raises money for a great cause, all with personality and humour. And that just says it all about this amazing personality.

Kulula the South African no-frills airline could be seen as mildly reckless or cavalier injecting humour into passenger safety announcements, but it seems to work. Whether it's the amusing livery on their fleet of aircraft or the in-flight announcements, Kulula deliver bags of laughs as well as hopefully delivering your bags at your destination. Here are some real life examples of Kulula's announcements:

• "Kulula Airlines is pleased to announce that we have some of the best flight attendants in the industry. Unfortunately, none of them are on this flight!”
• “Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to smoke, the smoking section on this airplane is on the wing. If you can light ‘em, you can smoke ‘em.”
• “Thank you for flying Kulula. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride.”

The Peperami Animal has been around since 1993 and the 'It's a bit of an animal' slogan has formed the backbone of their marketing ever since. Their 'Win a Fanimal' campaign was an inspired piece of subversive marketing to capitalise on the World Cup without being a sponsor. I'll let the Animal explain their ethos: "Throw me, hit me, squeeze me – I can take it, I’m a bit of an animal – and I’ll unleash the rants. Those lentil eating, veggie foreign teams won’t know what hit ‘em."

So, if you're considering a change of personality or giving birth to a new brand entity, whatever you do - be bold. Stick with what you believe in and, like the Peperami Animal, your brand personality will soon take on a life of it's own. Good Luck!

myWaitrose is point-less: a new generation of loyalty schemes that redefine the genre

Our interest in the evolution of loyalty schemes was piqued by a recent article on Marketing Week online heralding the new guard of consumer driven programmes. 

To quickly condense that article into a few soundbites for the FB status generation:

• a Colloquy study shows only 31% of people think loyalty schemes are relevant
• 3 new models have emerged putting consumers first through data-mining and harvesting
• Model 1: data-matching e.g. NPower who match offers to known leisure and lifestyle interests
• Model 2: paid-for privileges e.g. Ocado Savings Pass to save money on a basket of products
• Model 3: Social Network loyalty e.g. nearly every brand on Facebook getting you to like them in return for something (in)tangible

Another new innovation in loyalty schemes landed on my very own doormat this week, myWaitrose. Hence this article.

On the face of it, the concept is very refreshing.

1. You can't earn points but you will be sent random offers of relevance (see below)
2. If you remember to show your card at the till, Waitrose will 'learn' what you like and let you know when your favourites are on offer
3. One shopper per shop per month will win back their whole month's shopping
4. One customer per month will win a year's worth of Waitrose groceries
5. Check in online regularly for exclusive competitions, discounts, experiences etc

So, quite an ambitious package and, of course, we have our own opinion but Waitrose (bravely) have a Tell us What you Think forum where real life punters share their thoughts. Here's a summary of the main complaints:

• Various: why do I have to enter myWaitrose card number again for each competition entry?
• Cookie: "no real incentive to use the card every time... I'm guessing the novelty will wear off"
• Bluemental: "your cashiers didn't even know of it's existence"
• Mrs Lincoln: "not impressed that the vouchers for special offers can't be used online"
  (Editor - it's hard to buy petrol online!)
• Various: I can't use myWaitrose card with QuickScan self-checkout. Waitrose clearly haven't thought this through 

Conclusions

So are all these innovations going to change the face of loyalty? Yes, up to a point. On the whole myWaitrose appears to have been well received apart from the odd compliance or technical issue which often happen in the early days. They might be late to the supermarket loyalty party but with their enigmatically different approach they could be partying late into the night while other schemes have long gone to bed.

Overall data mining is a logical advancement in making the most of your customer relationship. The trick here is clearly how well the data is interpreted and actioned. The potential picture could have so many permutations that making the offers relevant on a macro level would be impossible or mega expensive. Clearly the Waitrose route of offering universally appealing Christmas wrapping paper, sweets and petrol can't go far wrong.

Finally, we are astounded that companies confuse Facebook likes with any real sense of loyalty. It becomes a rather meaningless playground popularity contest. If you're 'bribing' them with an offer in the first place, then what sort of people are you being liked by? Bargain hunters or loyal fans? How many ever come back and interact once they've liked you for a freebie?
Hello?... Marketeers?

Rules of engagement: using the gaming phenomenon to grow your brand

There's no escaping the fact that online and mobile gaming are taking larger proportions of our leisure time and, most importantly, money. Just take a look at the following figures*:

• The mobile gaming industry will make $8 billion this year and is expected to reach $11.4 billion by 2014
• 51% of the top 25 grossing games in the App Store are Free - see below
• In-Game purchases should overtake pay-per-downloads by 2013 (50% of revenue from top grossing iPhone apps comes from in-app purchases)
• App Store downloads exceed 1 billion per month or c. 34 million a day 4 times the iTunes song downloads
• 70-80% of all downloads are games
• 37% of iPhone owners play games daily 
• Interestingly 53% of mobile gamers are female, which is the opposite of the usual console gaming demographic

* Source Dailyinfographic.com

How do we, the sales promotion marketers, capitalise on this phenomenon?

Traditionally games deployed in sales promotion have been either devices for replicating an off-line instant win mechanic, a means of determining the winner by topping a leaderboard or simply the icing on the cake of a wider campaign. All very well, but not really tapping the massive potential of this market.

So, here are a selection of objectives that we've identified where online gaming could give your brand the edge:

• (re)define your brand personality or demonstrate your unique characteristics - see Doritos Dip Desperado
• build your social media presence
• associate with the brand equity of an already successful game and market your brand to their captive audience
• capitalise on a major sporting event (regardless of whether you are an official sponsor) using a generic themed game related to the sport
• create a viral hit game and watch your brand profile go interstellar

Clearly we won't go into all these options in detail here, but we can give you some pointers to get you started.

1st Decision - piggyback or piggy bank?

You've basically got to choose between piggy backing an existing successful game franchise or breaking open the piggy bank and creating your own. Clearly there are pros and cons for each but the headline is obviously the cost and the sub is ownership.

Piggybacking

A phenomenon within the phenomenon is the growth of Freemium Games. They hook you with an addictive game, offering an insight into the game's potential, but if you want extra levels, characters or features you're going to have to pay. Many of these games also operate their own in-game currency which can be used for such a purpose and herein lies the opportunity for sales promotion.

Far from being a nuisance or seen as a cynical marketing ploy, the chance to earn additional currency is the number one request from players of these games. The game can be centrally updated so all players will upgrade to the new version wherein they will see your brand logo with the option to earn currency by completing a specific task, i.e. liking, following, visiting your website etc. A simple symbiotic interaction where everyone is happy and you've associated your brand with a beloved game.

The other route is to have a game licensee customise a version of their game for you which is a happy compromise between all out development and a walk on part in someone else's game. Just such an example is Top Trumps. A personal favourite from the playground of my youth (when we did our living off-line), this game can now be played online on any subject you care to mention. These franchises have the benefit of an emotional, nostalgic tie-in, they're tried and tested and they offer a quick turnaround versus developing from scratch.

Developers of these games know a surprising amount about their customers and with so many out there you can choose your audience, themes and level of involvement.

Developing your own game

Now this is not a casual undertaking and you have to be sure that it will be worth the investment. More knowledgable people than I have already waxed lyrical on the subject and plenty of advice exists on the internet. Mosaic does know a number of developers and it certainly pays to know you're in a safe pair of hands. In the meantime, here are a few words of wisdom to help you decide for yourself:

• make sure that the game's milestones (achievements/tasks) are clear, visible and worthwhile
• the game mechanic must be expansive - a limited scope of gameplay will quickly lose interest
• no matter how many new features you have or add, players will always want more
• there are two types of online game, achievement orientated or cumulative character: these are basically testing virtues of performance Vs persistence respectively
• cheating and abuse - if something can be abused it will be. People will always find a way of using bots, macros and automation to conquer repetitive playing patterns
• players like clever things and will search them out. If you have cool features anywhere, they need to be everywhere otherwise players will only be disappointed

Above all keep it simple and make it fun!

2012: the UK's biggest ever year for event-lead marketing?

There aren't many years in which once in a lifetime events come along and like the proverbial wait for a bus, 2012 sees two come along at once. As if London 2012 Olympics wasn't enough, there's the small matter of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee as well. Who doesn't love all that showpiece royal pageantry? And we do it so well don't we?

Then there's a fairly major football tournament in the form of Euro 2012, as well as the usual calendar of major sporting and social events. So with this panoply of events to hang our marketing hats on, we'll be looking forward to a bumper crop of ground-breaking, creative and engaging sales promotions in 2012.

Of course there are limitations. You can't just go spouting off about the Olympics and Euro 2012 if you're not an official sponsor. And even then you will need to go through a stringent and drawn out approvals process with the relevant organising authorities. For the Diamond Jubilee there doesn't appear to be any specific legislation relating to the promotion of the Jubilee, or Diamond-related themes. However, you're not allowed to claim any association with or endorsement by any Royals, or use the royal coat of arms or images of the Royals without facing legal action or possible beheading.

So if, like most companies, you're not a major sponsor or don't happen to be in the royal inner circle, then you'll be wanting to capitalise on this perfect storm of her majesty's long reign and the shine of the Olympic torch?

Well as one of the directors of Mosaic Marketing I've just come back fresh from a legal briefing about running promotions around the Olympics. Whilst there are some legitimate exclusions, e.g. historical precedence or factual reporting, it will be very difficult to run any sales promotion which has the slightest whiff of an association with the Olympics. One very valid point to come out of the discussions was the fact that in leisure terms there will be an unprecedented number of people visiting the UK. Regardless of whether you're an Olympic sponsor, next summer will be a vital time to raise your profile and grab a slice of the action. Stick with promotions that enhance your core brand values and be bold!

What can we read into the latest Bellwether report? Budgets up / Confidence down

According to the latest IPA Bellwether Report for quarter 3 2011, there are some conflicting messages coming from the marketers of UK companies:

• A net +3.4% of companies have increased marketing budgets in Q3, the first up-tick after 3 straight quarters of decline. This budget increase is a one and a half year high.
• Executives' confidence for their own sector is -23.3% down from -10.9%. Optimism is at it's second lowest since the beginning of 2009.
• Executives are slightly more confident about their own company's prospects than the category as a whole.
• Sales promotion and other below the line activity recorded a positive index for the first time in nearly 4 years at a modest +2.8%.

Compiling statistics is an imprecise artform, hugely open to interpretation. Such manipulation has inevitably lead to such unflattering quotations relating to the practise as "There are lies, damn lies and statistics" or "You can prove anything with statistics except the truth". 

Now we haven't seen the Bellwether report in it's entirety, but just looking at the freely available headline figures from various websites you could equally draw the following conclusion:

• 21% of marketers have increased their marketing budgets in Q3.
• 79% of companies have cut their marketing budgets or left them completely unchanged.

Whilst it is interesting to compare these net figures across various business benchmarks they strike me as being rather meaningless without any context or sub categorisation. If you asked the big utility companies how they see their prospects over the coming 12 months they're probably going to be more up-beat than a chain of estate agents. And do we know if the company raising their budget enjoyed a particularly successful Q1 and Q2? Or, did they too revise their budgets down in the earlier quarters and have ended up with a war chest to spend in the all important run up to Christmas? How much have budgets increased as a proportion of their previous budget or even as a proportion of their turnover versus the average for that category?

We're all for spreading positive news and agree with the widely touted view that the media, the Bank of England and politicians can play a hugely damaging role by constantly talking down the economy.

So, if we're going to end on a positive note, let's concentrate on the astronomic shift towards internet and internet search spend? The highest ever quarter on quarter jump in the history of the report saw the index rise from +1.9% to +16.6%. Marketers know that they have to keep promoting themselves, especially when times are tough so they are understandably shunning traditional 'old media' and concentrating spend on measurable, good value channels which the internet has in abundance. 

Promowatch Top 10 August 2011

Here is a snap shot of the top 10 promotions featured on PromoWatch in August 2011 based on unique page views.

No.	Promotion	% of Views	Avg. Time on Page
1.	Mars - Bag a Million Movies	8.42%	1m 18s
2.	Ocean Spray - Bounce your Berry	6.83%	2m 20s
3.	Sainsbury's - Happy Days	7.01%	2m 4s
4.	McCoys - Dip Desperado	3.20%	3m 22s
5.	Hula Hoops - Happy Days	3.05%	2m 19s
6.	Asda - Price Guarantee	2.92%	1m 48s
7.	Doritos - Win Bud Cash Cards	2.28%	1m 56s
8.	McDonald's - Kung Fu Panda 2	2.05%	2m 18s
9.	Discovery Foods - Win Family Fun at Home	1.65%	2m 22s
10.	Fruit Shoot - Skill Kits	1.57%	1m 20s

Comment
Without inflating the importance of our industry and reading too much into things, there is a definite theme behind the themes of this month's top ten. Broadly the categories are the chance to win / earn fun things to do, the chance to get yourself in shape or win kit to help and the chance to save money. Not surprising perhaps considering that this was from August. An even split between discount offers and prizes this month as well which is a trend towards ensuring consumers at least receive something with their purchase.

PromoWatch Top 10 July 2011

Here is a snap shot of the top 10 promotions featured on PromoWatch in July 2011 based on page views.

No.	Promotion	% of Views	Avg. Time on Page
1.	Lynx - Summer Promotion	14.07%	1m 45s
2.	McDonald's - KungFuPanda 2	8.42%	0m 57s
3.	United Biscuits - Happy Days	7.34%	2m 15s
4.	Doritos - Dip Desperado	6.97%	2m 12s
5.	Frijj - Win Warren	5.36%	2m 09s
6.	McCoys - 2 for 1 Curry	5.16%	3m 09s
7.	Budweiser - Win Bud Cash Cards	3.99%	1m 14s
8.	Procter & Gamble - Free Olympics Games Tickets	3.14%	1m 17s
9.	Ribena - Win Family Festival Tickets	3.06%	2m 30s
10.	Discovery Foods - Win Family Fun at Home	2.54%	0m 53s

Comment
Promotions, at their most effective, engage you, give you something to aspire to and encourage you to come back and purchase again and again. Lynx is already selling the dream of instant sex appeal, so why not offer prizes of the ultimate Lynx boat trips the nature of which one can only imagine? And that really is the point. You imagine, you dream, you aspire. With McDonald's Kung Fu Panda - learn to be like your hero, PO. United Biscuits - win a money can't buy experience like having your very own theme park. And then there's Frijj - win a Warren. Well, so long as he's not a rioting looter - yes, people might even aspire to win him too.

Sales promotion in Italy is exciting and sexy - can you judge a country by its promotions?

David Cameron wasn't the only one working during his recent holiday in Tuscany. But of course he wasn't having to deal with quite so weighty matters as how Italian's do their sales promotion. Whilst he was falling out with local waitresses, I was scouring the shelves of our local Co-op to see how the mañana Mediterraneans motivate their consumers to make a purchase.

Headlines

One headline which particularly caught my eye was the succinct and catchy 'Bevi and Vinci' or in English 'Drink and Win' hung proudly round a bottle of Montepulciano! None of your namby pamby responsible drinking nonsense here. Get the wine down your neck and see if you've won a car. It makes Txt and Win seem decidedly dull (which of course it is).

Another which particularly leapt off the shelf was on a similarly brief consumptive theme on a packet of crisps: Fai il pieno... e gassss - fill me up and gas. Not that this relates to the prizes on offer - see below. 

Promotional Rewards

When you think of Italy, you think of style, fashion, mopeds, ferrari, pasta / pizza and philandering old media moguls. And to a large extent, excluding a Berlusconi related offer, most of the promotions we saw reflected these Italian preoccupations:

• Special K cereal - win 500 pairs of Miss Sixty Jeans
• Dixi Crisps - win San Carlo Honda Gresini Limited edition Watches or a Honda CBR125R
• La Caciatora wine - red Fiat 500
• Tuborg Beer - mega party at home, beer station
• Schwarzkopf Taft - Ducati Monster 696, helmets, tickets for moto grand prix
• De Agostini - iTunes card, iPod shuffle, Mac Book
• Kraft Foods - NBA game in New York, €100 Cisalfa outlet voucher
• San Benedetto water - 1.6 Petrol 2WD car, Xbox 360 video game
• Dr. Schär Srl gluten free mini pizza - Piaggio Vespa LX125, iPad 3G, Russell Hobbs toaster
• Energizer batteries - Energy efficient light bulbs, electric bicycle, solar and hybrid torches

As you will see just across the quite random selection of different brands there is a predominance in motorbikes or cars, premium gadgets and desirable labels. Certainly a hint at the perceived machismo of the Italian male?

Mechanics

Like in the UK, most of the promotions we looked at were enter code online or Txt n Win reflecting the digital age and cost of other fulfilment methods. One interesting difference was the requirement to actually finish a particular product in order to reveal the unique code, e.g. Dixi crisps the code was on the inside of the pack and on La Cacciatora wine, you had to drink the whole bottle to reveal the code behind the label. The neck collar in this instance was purely advertising the promotion and not the mechanic in itself. As you will no doubt have seen in the UK these often get stolen without a legitimate purchase having being made. 

Summary

Can you judge a nation by it's promotions? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that it depends on the nation. The UK is diverse, cosmopolitan and progressive but arguably without the strong sense of identity, personality and loyalty to their culinary heritage. The Italian promotions have charisma, bravado, excitement and energy. They're offering sexy jeans, sexy bikes or sexy gadgets nearly always illustrated with sexy people or cars. They urge you to 'drink and win' for goodness sake and hang the long term consequences. Life's too short. Eat the whole packet and THEN see if you've won. Enjoy the product first check out the promotion after. 

In marked contrast was the uniformed and seemingly formulaic nature of their terms and conditions. All the online terms we saw included the same information, detailed the territories, the prizes, the value of the prizes / rewards on offer (including VAT) and what and how you win them. Sure the UK has regulations, guidelines and enforcement agents but nothing like the consistency that appears to underpin the Italian sales promotion industry. As someone who reads a fair number of Ts and Cs it astounds me that we don't have a defined template which legally HAS to be approved by an independent body. Surely in an industry where protecting the consumer is paramount, prevention is better than post-regulation? 

Sales Promotion Trends 2011

Welcome to our annual look at the headline trends in sales promotion over the last 12 months. These are drawn exclusively from the 84 promotions featured on PromoWatch over the last year and, as such, this is inevitably a snapshot of the industry and by no means definitive. Saying that, all research is to some extent based on extrapolation of data from a representative sample so this survey is more relevant than most.

It is also worth bearing in mind that most campaigns offered more than one mechanic, reward etc. Therefore percentages shown are based on a proportion of the total in each category, not a percentage of the number of campaigns (84).

There has been an appreciable decline in the number of prize draws which has nearly halved from the 52% share last year. Instant wins on the other hand have more than doubled but the overall proportion of Competitions has still slipped from 63% to 51%. Gift with purchase and collector schemes are roughly on par with 2010, leaving Discount Partners and Skill / Voting based promotions to take up the slack. These were notably absent from last year perhaps demonstrating the austere times we're living in and a little more imagination from the marketeers? One of the more interesting Instant Wins was Typhoo's 'Find a Golden Teabag'.

The online mechanic continues to dominate sales promotion mechanics with the internet being integral to virtually every campaign featured on PromoWatch. Perhaps with an eye on lowering the barriers to entry, promotions that can be used straight off the pack is a welcome new entrant to the fray with a healthy slice of the pie. Phone has dropped off completely and mail, surprisingly has increased by 3%. The most interesting entry method of the last 12 months is Horlick's 'Made for Evenings' which used a heat and reveal mechanic that wraps straight round your steaming mug to show if you're a winner.

This is probably the most static category in terms of contrast to last year with most of the rewards presenting almost exactly the same result as last year. 'Coupon' for the purpose of this category is brands offering a discount against future purchases of their own products. We're surprised this hasn't featured more prominently as it displays confidence in your brand and locks-in the consumer. 

A new category for this year which we thought would form an interesting barometer for future years. There are certainly some sectors that are probably under-represented here, particularly 'in-store'. By the same token, with most stores offering perma-sales, annual collector schemes or other deals this sector could easily dominate the results. Taken as a whole, drinks account for a third of the total with both soft drinks and alcohol promoting the most. There is undoubtedly a correlation between the number of promotions and how tough conditions in a particular category are. It also reflects the competition for the discretionary / treat / comfort purchases which are inevitably linked to how well-off people are feeling.