Glass is half full, or half empty?

I can't tell is this is the ultimate in despration promotions or a great trial offer from Denny's for thier Grand Slam breakfast advertised during the media event of the year - the Super Bowl. See you on Tuesday! Thoughts?

P.S. What's with the Denny's franchise at location 350 Baker Blvd., Baker, CA?

NHL Winter Classic & Reebok

For you hockey fans out there, hopefully you all saw the NHL Winter Classic on NBC yesterday (Jan. 1, 2009). What a terrific event. This was the 2nd annual outdoor match up between NHL rivals. The first outdoor event, last year, featured the Buffalo Sabres, at home, against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Buffalo's outdoor football stadium. The snow was flying and the game went to an OT shootout that featured Sydny Crosby scoring the winning goal. An instant classic.

Yesterday's game featured the Chicago Blackhawks, a great young upstart team playing at home at Wrigley Field, against the Detroit red Wings, defending Stanley Cup champions. An equally exciting game, minus the OT shootout. The bad guys, Detroit, won the game.

For those watching, there was a great product integration/sponsorship promotion. The gist was - watch the game and correctly identify the player in the game not wearing a Reebok Hockey logo on his sweater. I never noticed who was missing the logo, but Jerome Hinkle did.

100 Grand World Series & Snickers Super Bowl

I'm a sucker for the impulse candy bar purchase at the grocery check out. This past fall there were minimally two great packagine promotions on candy bars featuring sports partnerships.

1. Nestle's 100 Grand & Baby Ruth - featured a packaging call-to-action driving you to a website to participate in an instant win access to MLB and the World Series.

2. Mars's Snickers - featured a code in wrapper that awards 17 weekly winners a trip to the 2009 SuperBowl.

Mortgage Business

You know the mortgage business is in the crapper when Lending Tree offers consumers a free set of brand spankin' new Callaway clubs for executing a new loan through their service. I saw a TV spot during the Barclay's tournament this weekend. Couldn't find the ad on Youtube, sorry. BUT might be worth getting out of my ARM for a set of these bad boys. I'm thinking this is a $1200 - $1500 value.

Welcome to Convention Season

Two of my favorite things... politics and Whiskey. Whether you are completely decided or on the fence about Barack Obama vs. John McCain, one thing is for sure... here in Denver you can fetch your limited edition Convention bottle of Makers Mark. I presume this is only being distributed to Colorado and Minnesota at this time. The bottle features both a donkey and elephant - so that brand is still on the fence. But, it wouldn't be a bad idea to get this sucker out for national distribution. And, shame on you Makers Mark for not leveraging this packaging effort onto your website or Facebook where the "conversation" is getting heated.

Packaging Media & Promotion

By now, you are all well aware of my bias for promotions that exist on pack as a means to create a promotionally responsive brand buying database. The latest case is that of Skoal smokeless tobacco. This particular promotion uses the can as a media venue to entice users to the skoalbrotherhood.com/Playboy website. The can also features a prominent Playboy "The Dipper Issue" logo. What's not to love so far. When entering the site you quickly realize that tobacco companies are held to a higher legal standard - they double verify your entered information against DMV data - so now you they recognize me as Edward, not Morgan.

This is a 6 week voting contest to pick the cover model of the December issue - The Dipper Issue - of Playboy. US Smokeless Tobacco does a nice job of segmenting my registration into usage frequency and occasion categories. As well, I had the option to self-select a free trial issue of Playboy when the issue comes out plus nominate myself to be a contributing member of the photo shoot, so to speak.

Facebook Promotion

Here's a nice first step from Alka-Seltzer, Maxim and Facebook at a digital promotion.

What I like: the use of Facebook as "media"; the partnership between Alka-Seltzer and Maxim; the unabashed "hangover helper" messaging.

What I'd change: add a packaging call to action (retail as media); ask some "usage" questions on the registration form (for data analysis on the back end); some extension content around the hangover concept (we could all use a little hangover e-mail excuse generator or a hangover group on Facebook or a user generated hangover photo album or etc.). I'll head to store tonight to confirm my assertion about packaging above before any of you try to call me out.

Promotional Math - Gas

$50 + $70 = $120 x 4 = $480.
That's how much I spend on average per month on gas for 2 cars.

$480 x 12 = $5,760
That's how much I spend on gas per year, provided gas prices lock in at today's rates.

Now, let's say I go out and buy a Chrysler, Dodge or Jeep and take advantage of their LetsRefuelAmerica.com promotion and lock in my price per gallon gas rate at $2.99... well, the difference is pretty significant:
- my monthly average spend drops from $480 to $358 (-$122)
- and, my annual spend drops from $5,760 to $4,296 (-$1,464)

Some particulars include the $2.99/gallon price is locked for 3 years and cover up to 12,000 miles per year. Admittedly, this is not a big online promotion other than you can find it in search, advertising and blogs. Here is more info at the Chrysler blog.

Here's the Today Show story on the deal:

Looking for a Director

Please contact me immediately if you know someone (or are someone) that could be considered for a Director of Digital role at The Integer Group (http://www.integer.com/).

Here is the sassy job post I have been using...

Digital Director
Seeking an aggressive seller of ideas. A strategist. Champion of the digital future.
If you are an Account Planner-type with 5-10 years of digital marketing and planning experience, we need you today to define, accelerate, and grow the digital agenda at a 600+ person, top 5 promotions/retail agency, in sunny (golf 9 months/year) Denver, Colorado. This role demands that you excel at badgering client teams (account and creative directors), pulling together new business presentations that not only sell but inspire (overnight), and leading a team of 10 (at times belligerent) web creatives and producers, flash developers, and technologists. Maybe most importantly you must demonstrate proficiency in “managing up” to a senior leadership team of the agency in an attempt to convince them that we did not waste their time hiring you. Here’s a chance to be a marketing entrepreneur without all the personal risk, you in?

Find me on Facebook, or Linkedin, or e-mail me through my blogger profile.

PUMA - Mongolian BBQ & W Hotel

I just got back from the big city - New York. I stayed one night in a shoe box hotel room at the W Hotel on Lex in New York. See picture of the bathroom for proof of shoebox size. Anyway, there is a brilliant promotional partnership between PUMA and W Hotels. I found this piece in my room.

Now I didn't order up a tray of PUMA's but I did go online to www.puma.com/whotels to make my own. And, now I wish I had ordered up the tray. Great sampling/trial/partnership.

AdvilPM

Thanks to the Denver Post's evaporating subscription base I now ungratefully receive the weekend paper for free. I guess you'd call that at-home sampling in a duel effort to hook me on the product again and/or inflate their circulation numbers for the benefit of continued ad dollars from the likes of Dealin' Doug, et al. Well, since the product hasn't evolved, or minimally improved, I'm not coming back as a subscriber. I'm barely a reader of the free paper.

There was an interesting sampling promotion on this weekend's rag though for AdvilPM. They must know I have had many sleepless nights recently - due to an infant though, not stress or other sleep related disorders. Anyway, the reason I thought it was interesting was because Advil took great effort to merchandise their online promotion - www.advilpm.com/sweeps - in order to collect my data so they can sample and promote in the future direct to consumer - see ya later newspaper. So, I registered online for a chance to win $10,000. I also took the $2 coupon found inside the piece and will use it to stock up. Additionally, I found another $2 coupon on the AdvilPM website.

Wrigley's - I'm a Winner!

The other day I was checking out at the local Albertson's and surveyed the impulse-buy gum rack. Wrigley's jumped out at me due to their clever on-pack promotion. You could win a trip to the NBA Finals, or cool NBA merch., or free gum. You bet. I entered and I won. I didn't even have a chance to write up a post about the promo - which is clever because all the impulse-buy gums are using product innovation (i.e. white teeth claims) to stand out. This stood out via promotion. The code can be found on the strip that you pull to open the gum. And, yes you can text in your code right in the check out line, like I did. Oh, did I mention I won free gum. Finally, I've won a promotion.

Tee Off With Tiger!

I'm back. After a long hard off-season (read: slumber, welcoming of a second child), I've dusted off the mitt and joined you again for a little spring training, so to speak.

What better topic to re-emerge with than the Tee Off With Tiger promotion from BUICK. Tiger's on a roll, after a 25-foot birdie put on the 18th at Bay Hill - are you kidding me - and this great promotion that launches ASAP.

It can be found here: teeoffwithtiger.com or a full recap (thanks to Chris Dolan) here at BrandWeek.

As you will learn, a personal round of caddying for the Tiger is at stake, but also much more. All you have to do is predict Tiger's round-by-round score for any tournament he blesses this season between now and September 28. Good thing they aren't asking consumers to predict if he wins those tourneys - in that case, click YES. The top 10 prognosticators go into a pool to be Tiger's caddy and the winner also gets passes (accommodations) to the 2008 Buick Invitational and U.S. Open. Finally, the winner also gets to play at Torrey Pines with Tiger hauling your rig (clubs). Naturally, there is a car - a Buick - at stake too.

Tiger, if you are reading this, I'd be honored to have you schlep my clubs at Torrey Pines - I tore up Spyglass with a personal best - 80 - with a local caddy. Imagine what you could do for my game.

Winners: Red Sox, me

Congrats to the 2007 Boston Red Sox. Too bad this celebration couldn't have occurred in Boston, at Fenway. Upon leaving the stadium I was reminded that this was no average Rockies game - there were 20 SWAT police (in full riot gear, with accompanying high calibre machine guns) outside the main entrance just waiting for a punk like me to mouth off. I'll mouth off, so to speak, tomorrow (10/30) at Taco Bell. Free taco - thank you Ellsbury.

Sox v. Rox

I can't lose either way. Although, I must say I'd love for the boy to be more conscious this time when the Sox win. Last time he was a bit weeee.

Picture: Picture of picture on my desk at work. Circa Oct. 27, 2004.

America won last night when Jacoby Ellsbury stole second. The Taco Bell promotion - which is a brilliant piece of promotional advertising - stipulates that when the first base of the World Series is stolen (check) then America wins a free taco at participating Taco Bells on October 30, 2007, between 3-5pm local time.

See ESPN.com's brief note on the dealio here (interesting how a retail promotion slipped into mainstream/mass sports journalism): http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=271025102

P.S. Fox keeps showing Royce Clayton on the Sox bench talking about the promo - and even if it is planted/paid promotion, I giggle every time Fox replays the conversations.