The Big Picture

PromoWatch Top 10 January 2012 - Morrisons Win Free Shopping this January tops the austerity driven chart

The New Year has started with gusto at PromoWatch with visitor numbers going through the roof - on some days 5 times the average daily traffic in 2011. This is due in no small part to the engaging sales promotions that are out there at the moment. Here's our top ten by unique visitors for January 2012.

No.	Promotion	% of Views	Avg. Time on Page
1.	Morrisons - Win Free Shopping this Jan	24.42%	1m 48s
2.	Actimel - Free Helping Hand	13.58%	2m 26s
3.	Special K - Million X-Factor Lipsticks to be won	11.88%	1m 48s
4.	Beck's - Free Music Downloads	3.06%	3m 30s
5.	Wrigley's Extra - Win a Fiver	2.76%	2m 42s
6.	Ocean Spray - Bounce your Berry	1.83%	3m 46s
7.	Ski - Family Holiday Offer	1.56%	2m 16s
8.	KitKat - Choose Your Chunky Champion	1.54%	1m 2s
9.	Walkers Crisps - What's That Flavour	1.24%	1m 48s
10.	Crisp 'n Dry - Win Cash For Christmas	1.10%	3m 16s

Comment
The best things in life are free and that certainly seems to be the hook of choice for the promotions this month. We can also detect a New Year feel to the popular choices with squeezed budgets, domestic spring cleaning and feeling good about yourself taking the top 3 spots.

 

PromoWatch Top 10 November 2011 - Wrigleys Extra Tooth Fairy squeezes out Ocean Spray's Berries

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

No.	Promotion	% of Views	Avg. Time on Page
1. (4)	Wrigleys Extra - Tooth Fairy	13.71%	1m 58s
2. (-)	New Covent Garden Soup - Win a Farm	8.36%	2m 5s
3. (6)	Becks - Free Music Downloads	7.49%	3m 26s
4. (2)	Crisp 'n Dry - Win cash for Christmas	7.16%	2m 10s
5. (3)	Kit-Kat - Win your perfect break	6.86%	1m 42s
6. (1)	Ocean Spray - Bounce your berry	5.62%	3m 2s
7. (-)	McDonald's - Best Ever Free Coca-Cola glass	5.54%	1m 43s
8. (7)	Discovery Food - Win family fun at home	2.06%	2m 43s
9. (-)	Laughing Cow - Win a 5-Star Farm Break	1.31%	1m 39s
10. (17)	Ski - Family Holiday Offer	1.22%	1m 25s

Comment
Ocean Spray's Bounce you Berry has been toppled from the no. 1 spot by Wrigleys Extra Tooth Fairy, although it's still hanging on to the top 10. Looking over the list freebies and prize draws dominate with a surprising trend towards Farm related prizes emerging - if you can call two promotions a trend or an emergence for that matter.

 

PromoWatch Top 10 - Ocean Spray Bouncing Berry still flying high

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

No.	Promotion	% of Views	Avg. Time on Page
1. (1)	Ocean Spray - Bounce your berry	10.87%	3m 14s
2. (-)	Crisp 'n Dry - Win cash for Christmas	8.09%	2m 2s
3. (2)	Kit-Kat - Win your perfect break	7.21%	1m 34s
4. (-)	Wrigleys Extra - Tooth Fairy	7.73%	1m 55s
5. (6)	Actimel - Win 500 back packs	3.08%	1m 22s
6. (4)	Becks - Free Music Downloads	4.32%	4m 19s
7. (7)	Discovery Food - Win family fun at home	3.22%	2m 3s
8. (8)	Sainsbury's - Summer Savings	2.71%	3m 6s
9. (-)	Doritos/Pepsi Max - Vegas or Iceland	2.01%	1m 31s
10. (3)	Mars - Bag a million movies	1.83%	3m 9s

Comment
Bounce you Berry continues to bear fruit for Ocean Spray allbeit with half of the unique views from the previous month. We can't really fathom what's causing this cranberry clamour save for the fact that it is a Facebook based promotion, but you still have to enter a code from packs to win. Whatever it is, there's something viral going on which may counter what we thought from a social networking loyalty programme point of view. It all begs the question, when will Bounce Your Berry run out of juice?

Otherwise we have a mix of 3 new entries, 2 promotions which are repeating a previous concept, 2 non-movers of 5 which haven't moved much. Sainsbury's Summer Savings actually finished at the end of September. Some people obviously don't want summer to end...

PromoWatch Top 10 Sept 2011: Ocean Spray Bounce your Berry tops chart

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

No.	Promotion	% of Views	Avg. Time on Page
1. (2)	Ocean Spray - Bounce your berry	30.17%	2m 39s
2. (-)	KitKat - Win your perfect break	5.67%	1m 49s
3. (1)	Mars - Bag a Million Movies	4.59%	1m 54s
4. (12)	Beck's - Free Music Downloads	3.53%	3m 28s
5. (19)	Brancott Estate - Win a Trip to New Zealand	3.45%	2m 29s
6. (-)	Actimel - Win 500 back packs	3.14%	1m 35s
7. (9)	Discovery Food - Win family fun at home	2.64%	2m 48s
8. (3)	Sainsbury's - Summer Savings	2.28%	2m 5s
9. (15)	Bertolli - Win a year of fine foods	2.20%	2m 13s
10. (8)	McDonald's - Kung-Fu Panda 2	1.65%	2m 47s

Comment
For the first time we've had a No. 1 promotion which is not only considerably higher than the next campaign but it was higher than the default homepage. So, well done to Ocean Spray. There's a certain amount of escapism and aspiration about this month's crop. Whether it's a better body, a perfect holiday or the chance to sample the finer things in life.

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. 

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. 

Mosaic Marketing scoops IPM Service Partner of the Year 2011 Award

From Left to Right: Sponsor, Michelle Leahy, Paul Preece, Sarah Fitzgerald, Chloe Timms and Greg Davies

And the Awards goes to...
We are proud to announce that Mosaic Marketing & Promotions was awarded the IPM Service Partner of the Year Award 2011 at a glitzy ceremony at the Park Lane Hilton in June.

Service partners are acknowledged as working hard for very little recognition, which the IPM has acknowledged with the introduction of it's very own Awards in the form of The Cogs. Indeed many agencies omit the fact that they had a service partner at all in fear of sharing the accolades, or perhaps even the client? Despite this, around 100 different service partners were singled out for consideration. According to the IPM "for a service partner to be singled out for praise in a [prestigious IPM Awards] nominated campaign, means they are themselves amongst the best in the UK, if not the world".

For our part, to have beaten 99 other companies to win this award is extremely rewarding. We have played our part in many ground-breaking campaigns over our 14 years in the industry, so to finally receive an IPM gong is similar to Darren Clarke winning a golf major. 

The evening itself was hosted by comedian Greg Davies (Mr Gilbert in the Inbetweeners), who literally towered over proceedings (6ft 8" tall!). Despite his formidable reputation as Mr Gilbert, he sometimes lost the attention of his excitable audience who admittedly were distracted by other things - like booze, trophy gazing and in my case throwing a cherry liqueur over my dress shirt. Doh!

Mosaic Marketing & Promotions Ltd

Is ASA wrong to uphold complaint about Walkers Tenner if it Rains promotion?

The ASA has upheld a complaint about the Walkers Tenner if it Rains promotion giving consumers the chance to win £10 if they correctly predicted where in the British Isles it was going to rain during a 3 hour period.

Looking at the adjudication something doesn't seem quite right. On the one hand it states that Walkers underestimated the potential uptake on their 'Win a Tenner if it Rains' promotion which they state, in their defense, was based on the uptake of their previous campaigns Gary's Great Trips ('GGT') and Great Brit Trips. Now, the Tenner if it Rains concept was absolutely unique and there was no precedence set in terms of previous participation for them to draw on. However, on Pepsico's own website they say that 596,524 consumers registered an account for GGT. So you would imagine that even if Walkers were being extremely pessimistic, they would have assumed that a promotion offering the chance to win £10 when it rains, in a country where rain is not exactly rare, in a financial climate of ever-tightening austerity, it might do at least as well as GGT which offered people a far less tangible rewards than £10 cold hard cash. Equally, by their own proclamation, 10 million people eat a packet of Walkers crisps every day and they originally gave consumers 2 plays per day to make a prediction with only 21,271 grid spots available every day. That's only enough grids for 0.1% of their daily consumers to play twice. 

On the other hand, what was Walkers supposed to do? 2 and a half weeks into the campaign, uptake had exceeded their expectations. They took steps to ensure that the promotion was open to as many consumers as possible by adjusting the terms and conditions to limit the number of plays to 1 per day. This was emailed to all registrants and, on the face of it, was not exactly a big deal to the consumer. If Walkers hadn't taken action there could have been many more consumers who complained at not being able to participate at all.

In any event the outcome for Walkers is fairly benign. The ASA ruled that Walkers cannot run the campaign again in it's current form. Ouch that must have hurt. Whilst they have a history of running successful campaigns for a second time, they were extremely unlikely to run it in the same manner (or perhaps even at the same time of year) again. At the last count they've paid out £1,383,930 pretty expensive even by Walkers standards. Our guess is that they would need to increase the number of grid locations and probably provide a stronger alternative offering to take pressure off the number of predictions. Or why not do predictions around something else? Snow, football, potatoes, alien invasion...

Final Thoughts
Ultimately the whole case was brought about because of 1 individual out of about 40,000 who felt aggrieved enough to complain. Hardly the uprising of a baying public hungry for blood. 

The framework of the CAP Code and the ASA's remit over the internet is all well and good, but by the very nature of the viral virtual world we live in, promotions are always going to produce unexpected outcomes which wrong-foot marketers. Surely there needs to be a mechanism whereby promoters can legitimately adjust their terms and conditions to achieve the fairest outcome for the many, whilst being protective of the few? If the ASA is to be the supreme judge, should it not also be charged with agreeing the promotional parameters before a campaign goes live? 

Promo Watch Top 10 Feb 2011

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

No.	Promotion	% of Views	Avg. Time on Page
1. (3)	Lucozade - Win an iPhone every hour	6.31%	2m 27s
2. (-)	Wolf Blass - £1000 Cashcard	4.54%	2m 07s
3. (1)	Muller Light - Win £1000 shopping spree	3.97%	1m 56s
4. (2)	Carling - Win a glass every minute	2.16%	2m 41s
5. (-)	Nobilo - Win a pair of Friedel Glasses	2.13%	1m 33s
6. (37)	Walkers - Clash of the Comics	2.11%	2m 04s
7. (7)	Mars - Bag a Film	1.98%	1m 59s
8. (4)	Stella Artois - Free Chalice Glass	1.93%	1m 37s
9. (6)	Robinsons - Win a Laptop	1.82%	1m 10s
10. (35)	Galaxy - Book Club	1.80%	1m 08s

Comment
Some themes developing here. Austerity is driving the popularity of competitions to win lovely loot, while the drinks industry is providing various ways of getting the only obvious gift with purchase they can - a free drinking glass. 

Marketing on the move - is marketing by mobile now a reality?

Although we can't claim an exclusive scoop on this, we can confidently predict that the way we interact with our media is fundamentally changing, if it hasn't already. Even the BBC's head of on-demand programming, Daniel Danker, concurs prophesying that the future of their iPlayer service is mobile - "the ratio of growth we are seeing by mobile is incredible". 

Mobile Minefield
So, as sure as day follows night, advertisers (and therefore brand marketing in general) will follow media into these mobile channels. But what is the best way to tap the smartphone market? From our perspective, which is obviously sales promotion biased, there are three major mechanical options to choose from, with a myriad of providers within each.

1. Smartphone Apps
2. SMS entry
3. Barcodes
4. Image recognition 

1) Apps
Few can have missed the meteoric rise of Apple's App Store which passed the milestone of 10 billion downloaded apps last year. Apple created a whole new category but you can rest assured that Google, Microsoft, Nokia et al will do their utmost to emulate, improve and maybe even surpass their achievement. The global market for apps is set to reach $3.9 billion in 2011 up 81.5% on 2010, so clearly the bandwagon still hasn't left town.

Sales Promotion Apps
What sort of apps can we expect to see to enhance our sales promotion lives?

• Nearest venue locator - discount offers / programmes, sampling etc either static or based on your current location
• Secure voucher / proof of membership id
• A reader for QR (Quick Response) Codes - see image recognition below
• Instant win, game of chance / skill mechanic
• Mobile currency - use your phone for cashless transactions

2) SMS
A familiar and long used mechanic for 'Text to Enter' type promotions. Has the benefit that it is universally compatible, consumers are comfortable with the process and you don't need to install anything to participate. Perhaps it's main benefit is also its downfall. As they say familiarity breeds contempt, and 'Text to Win' has been done to death.

3) Barcodes
The MMS (Multimedia Message Service) is almost as universally compatible as SMS and offers the ability to send and receive barcodes used for couponing in the retail environment but also for paperless ticketing for events. This technology has been around for some years, but is still relatively niche. From our experience the main complication comes in trying to ensure the barcode is compatible with the retailer's EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale) system and even then there is the issue of how well they scan on flatbed scanners and the consequent increase in transaction time - which big retailers are very sensitive about.

4) Image Recognition

Aside from the endless possibilities of Apps, this option is really starting to gain momentum. Just flicking through newspaper travel adverts, we were surprised by the proportion of ads that featured a QR code. Curiosity about this seemingly random splurge of pixels almost compels you to scan it with your phone's camera to see what lies behind the dots.

However QR codes are not the only word in image recognition. You can also feature your own logo, image or icon within a border with a unique digital signature - a 'tag'. This image can then be reproduced wherever you want and consumers simply photograph it and send it to a short code SMS number or email it to receive more information.

Both routes offer pros and cons, the main one for QR Codes being the need to install a QR Code reader into your mobile phone. However once installed, interacting with a QR Code is a one step process which immediately takes you to the required information. The destination behind the code can be changed whenever you want, and all interactions can be tracked in realtime.

With the digital tags no software installation is required, but there is a three step process to receiving your message - Snap, Send, Get. The system can recognise previous interactions and therefore take you deeper into 'the conversation' with the brand by providing more information each time the tag is submitted. Being a digital solution, it too can produce comprehensive reporting information.

Applications

• Mobile business cards - you can update information on the fly if you move, get promoted etc
• TV Voting - without the need to continually broadcast phone numbers
• Show Me More - add an extra dimension to your advertising by linking to more information, video, downloads and apps - see Waitrose Christmas campaign
• Proof of purchase - to qualify for special offers
• Data Capture - for exhibition badges, social networking - you can even print QR Codes on tatoos (could get messy when you're out on the town!)

If you want to find out more about Tags or QR Codes, contact Mosaic for more information.

Final thoughts
Before we get carried away and cover ourselves in temporary QR tattoos, Mintel reminds us that a large proportion of mobile users have not joined the smartphone revolution. in fact 56% agree that ‘as long I can make voice calls and texts, I don’t care about other features and functions’.

Unsurprisingly iPhone owners are three times more likely to browse the internet or listen to music and four times more likely to download apps than mobile users overall. 40% of 16-24-year-olds use their phone to access the internet on a daily basis, compared to 23% of mobile users overall.

So, the perhaps obvious lesson from all this is that you need to consider the nature of your audience before you make the leap. Such campaigns are going to have far more relevance to Sony than Stannah Stairlifts.