brandcentric blog

I’m really digging this interactive contest that the Nature Valley team at General Mills recently wrapped up titled “Where’s Yours?”.  Consumers were asked to record a video about their favorite outdoor destination and then post to YouTube to receive votes.  There were some pretty elaborate and entertaining entries from a passionate group of Nature Valley consumers.  The brief video overview pasted above does a nice job of laying out the contest rules and dream vacation prizes.

Two things really impressed me with the design and execution of this activity:

1. How well the brand engaged a group of loyal advocates to literally sing about and praise the brand in such a public way.  You can’t buy this type of advertising.

2. The large scale of online media used to support the contest.  According to BrandWeek, Mills invested nearly $3MM in display ads to support the campaign and related sweesptakes.  The results were equally as impressive, with 1000% increases in search queries and website visits.

We’ve entered an era where big brands are engaging consumers in more meaningful ways and are supporting these activities with pretty sizable digital media investments.  It’ll be fun to see how the Nature Valley team follows up on this successful campaign.

It’s hard to deny that digital coupon distribution is poised for a breakout year.  According to Scarborough Research, 11% of US households printed coupons via the internet in 2007 (up 83% since 2005!)  That figure has no doubt grown since this study was executed, given the multiple price advances manufacturers were forced to take in the first half of 2008. 

To add some perspective to this, newspaper FSIs still reign supreme for reach in coupon delivery, with 53% of households obtaining coupons through this medium (up just 8% since 2005).   And other delivery vehicles such as in-store, direct mail and product packaging will continue to have their place.

But CPG marketers now have some pretty interesting choices with how to deliver coupons to consumers in the digital realm.  Here are three different approaches that all have their pros and cons:

1. Printable coupons -  Consumers visit coupons.com (or one of their distribution partners), select desired coupons, print locally and then redeem during their next shopping trip.  The initial fear some manufacturers (and many retailers) had with printable online coupons is print fraud.  And to an extent, the concerns are still very real.   Coupons, Inc. has invested significant R&D into minimizing unauthorized prints, but fraud persists. Still, this approach accounts for the vast majority of digital coupon distribution to date.

2. Loyalty card integration- This approach is intriguing, as it eliminates the print fraud concern and provides a more streamlined consumer experience.  In this case consumers select desired coupons online and electronically “deposit” the coupon as stored value onto their retail loyalty card.   During their next shopping visit, the value is automatically deducted from their card if the qualifying item is purchased.   The big hitch with this approach is that participation today is limited to Kroger and its affiliate retail banners.  AOL’s Shortcuts and SoftCoin’s eCoupon program for P&G are the two technology providers driving this innovation.

3. Mobile delivery – This model is still in its infancy, but offers a rich opportunity to engage consumers in a more meaningful way.  One entry point is to offer and deliver mobile coupons to consumers during the shopping trip, while a buying decision can be affected.  Companies like Cellfire  can push discount offers to a mobile phone and/or leverage electronic value deposit to select retail loyalty cards, as in approach #2 above.

It’s an exciting time to be driving a digital marketing strategy for today’s consumers.  And within the world of digital coupon delivery, brand marketers have a pretty interesting array of choices to draw from.

I love this idea and thought it was long overdue: set up an intensive job swapping program for CPG brand marketers (like those from P&G) and a new media organization (like Google).  Expose one another to a “month in the life” of the other side to build a better appreciation for how to do business with one another.  Sounds great on paper.

Here is a link to the story on WSJ (subscription required).

This is a fantastic first step, but more of this cross-breeding needs to happen in CPG land, as many of the big brand teams (and their old line agencies) are still focused on traditional media.  The needle is slowly moving, and behavior differs by brand and category, but there is still a pretty big gap to close.  The last research I saw suggests that, on average, CPG budgets allocate just a few percentage points to interactive with the vast majority still funneling toward television and print.  Old habits die hard, I guess.

That all said, kudos to Tim Armstrong from Google and his counterparts at P&G for pulling this off.

This video is fascinating on many levels.  First, it features relatively young kids teaching a cooking lesson in a surprisingly well-scripted and produced video.  Second, this video is part of a series distributed via YouTube, and apparently has amassed quite a following judging by the viewer comments.  Finally, while there is no commercial endorsement (other than their own Spatulatta brand), I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing some subtle (or not so subtle) product placement in future episodes.  That could have been Pam Cooking Spray featured during the first 15 seconds!