P. Diddy and Ciroc Vodka

It is crazy how prevalent alcohol is in music. It is so frequent that I hear a rap about a certain type of champagne or vodka. This is crucial for the brand development of different types of alcohol. Any alcohol being rapped about people automatically associate as the best, most classy alcohol. A recent article I read was about P. Diddy signing a partnership with Diageo PLC who owns Ciroc Vodka. The arrangement with Sean Combs ("P. Diddy") Enterprises is said to be worth more than $100 million depending on how the Ciroc Vodka brand does. Since the one and only P. Diddy is devoting a tremendous amount of his time to promote this product I think his efforts will be very successful. All P. Diddy needs to do is be seen drinking or talking about Ciroc Vodka and others will think it is hip, in style, top of the line and purchase it themselves. Everyone wants to emulate their favorite celebrity and P. Diddy has a tremendous amount of fans. He is just the right person to promote this vodka as rappers are normally the celebrities who promote alcoholic beverages.

P. Diddy will definitely be able to use to his advantage the sleek look of the Ciroc Vodka bottle. The bottle is tall and slender and the labeling is very simple. The colors are just clear and some blue. It is definitely a bottle that a celebrity would have no problem being associated with.

Combs was originally interested in promoting his own vodka line but when he saw Ciroc Vodka he was very impressed. The vodka is infused with French grapes. I think P. Diddy will be very successful in promoting the vodka as he already has his own line of clothing and fragrance that are very common. P. Diddy said, "I am not just a celebrity endorser. I'm a luxury brand builder." This partnership between P. Diddy and Diageo PLC has received a tremendous amount of publicity and I am sure you will begin to hear more and more about ciroc vodka and it will eventually be associated with vodkas like Grey Goose and Kettle One.

The article discussed was found at: http://promomagazine.com/news/diddy_ciroc_vodka/

To read more about P. Diddy's new partnership there is also an article written about it by the Associated Press that can be found at: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jp3XHuELVTm0f08rIAZYGFu4LlcA

Papa John's Promotes 'Spider Man 3' DVD

Who doesn't love Spiderman and wouldn't like to see him on a Papa John's pizza box?! A recent article I read discussed how Papa John's is promoting the release of the Spider Man 3 DVD by printing Spider Man 3 pizza boxes! Papa Johns has teamed up with Sony in an incredible promotion. This promoting really caught my eye because it consists of a bunch of elements besides the pizza box that tie into each other very well. I think the promotion will be very successful.

First, Papa John's created a special pizza to promote Spiderman. It is a Super Hero XL3 pizza. The pie is 30% bigger than a large pizza. All Super Hero pizzas come with a $3 dollar coupon for the Spider Man 3 DVD which will be released October 30th. Papa John's is also offering Spider Man themed gift cards. There will be a DVD launch event in New York where Spiderman himself will perform stunts! At the event Spiderman will kick off the Hometown Super-Hero program. The Hometown Super-Hero program is a campaign in which Papa John's will give away $1 million worth of Super Hero pizzas nationwide to honor police, fire and rescue workers, and military personnel - it is for a great cause! To learn more about Papa John's teaming up with Sony you can read their news release.

I think this promotion will be really successful as there are many Spiderman fans out there. Many young children will ask their parents to order the Super Hero pizza because it is bigger and what little kid doesn't want to be a super hero at some point? Also I think that this promotion will entice many people to purchase a Spider Man 3 DVD as they will already have a coupon for it if they have purchased a Super Hero pizza. Also many of the elements of this promotion will leave people curious and inspire them to buy the DVD. I still haven't seen Spider Man 3 and after reading this promotion I want a Super Hero pizza and really can't wait to see the movie!

The article I read also included a small blurb at the end about the movie - it sounds really good! As I have seen the first two Spiderman movies, I must see the third! For those of you who are curious here is the trailer for the movie:



The article discussed was found at: http://promomagazine.com/news/papa_johns_spiderman_dvd/

M&M Halloween Promotion

Surprisingly, Mars North America, the company that owns M&Ms already ran a Halloween promotion in Times Square! An article in Promo Magazine described the promotion. There was an event outside the Mars store that consisted of a headless horseman and a candy give away. The promotion served to draw attention to M&M's $1 million Halloween Instant Win Game and sweepstakes which goes until October 31. Not only was there a costumed horseman in the streets of Manhatten but Joey Fatone was there to help promote the contest as well! Fatone and the horseman were escorting a armored truck with thousands of bags of M&M's candies, all contaning a code needed to enter the sweepstakes.

To enter the contest, enter your codes at http://www.MMS.com! Get a bag of M&M's and enter, you could win $1 million dollars. Purchasing some M&Ms is definitely on my to-do list this week! This money prize is not the only prize you could win - there are others! An instant-win game provides the chance to win a seven-day family trip to the Haunted Mansion at Walt Disney and $1,000 in spending money. Smaller prizes include a year's supply of M&M treats and Halloween DVDs. I love M&Ms so it won't be a problem for me to buy and eat them in order to get the codes for the contest!


At first the costumed horseman seemed a little weird to me, but I am sure it probably did a great job drawing peoples' attention to the promotion. Also I think it was a good idea on Mars North America's part to hire a famous celebrity (Joey Fatone) to help promote the candy and the contest. Everyone takes a promotion more seriously when a celebrity is supporting it! I think this promotion will be very successful and I am very envious of whoever wins!

The article discussed was found at: http://promomagazine.com/eventmarketing/news/mms_halloween_nyc/

WWE Reading Contest

A recent article I read was about a contest sponsored by the wrestling industry. The contest was a reading contest for students believe it or not! World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is doing its second annual reading contest for teens. The winners receive tickets to Wrestlemania 24. WWE's reading challenge falls at the same time as Teen Read Week. Students who are in grades 7-12 and are members of libraries participating in the contest are eligible. Students are required to read 10 books or magazines and write a short essay by January 17th. The theme for the essay is "Why Wrestlemania Got Me Reading." Ten finalists will be selected who will have the opportunity to attend the annual pro wrestling event.

After reading this promotion I was a little surprised at first that wrestling is being linked to reading and education. It is very interesting to me. However, I think that WWE has done a great job targeting their audience. The main viewers of wrestling are grades 7-12 and that is why this contest received such a large response. More than 1,000 students from 490 libraries wrote essays! That is a great response rate for a contest that requires so much reading and an essay. I would be curious to read the essays of some of the students.

Students were probably very responsive to this contest because if the WWE is advertising it and they like wrestling it must be "cool." All teenagers are typically willing to participate in a contest that pertains to something they have a passion for (wrestling in this case). I never understood the passion or interest in wrestling, but hey, the high response rate of this contest shows my opinion doesn't mean much! The WWE did a great job with this contest and portrayed themselves in a great light by doing something educational.

The article discussed can be found at: http://promomagazine.com/news/wwe_wrestlemania_tix/

"Everything you need to know about search engine marketing"

I listened to a Web seminar on search engine marketing and it was extremely interesting. A Shar VanBoskirk from forrester.com spoke on they key elements of search engine marketing and how it could be improved. A few of the key elements of search engine marketing VanBoskirk discussed included establishing a persona through the marketing, applying direct marketing smarts to ad copy, thinking of search marketing as a science, and many more. She also discussed the types of searches out there; vertical search which helps people buy by filtering out unrelated content, social search which weeds out all content and focuses solely on the searcher, and personalized search which bases the results on a survey about the consumer.

I thought that many of the search engines discussed in the seminar were very clever and extremely interesting, especially the example used for personalized search. VanBoskirk discussed a Web site which surveys the buyer and generates custom jeans for them. I think the most important point in the seminar is that search engines must be targeted to a specific user and should take a database approach to understand who the customers are.

Another interesting part of the seminar was a diagram depicting what percent of people use which search engines and where they overlap. The diagram included Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. The main point of it was to show that many people use multiple search engines, therefore audiences can be reached across a multitude of search engines.

HP and YouTube

One of the many ways companies promote their products or create contests is by teaming up with each other. This is a very smart tactic as the contest will not only get publicity because of one company, but two or more as well. I found an article which discusses how HP is partnering with YouTube to sponsor a contest.

It is a contest in which one filmmaker will receive a $5000 prize, a meeting with executives from Fox Searchlight Productions, and a screening at an international film festival. The competition is known as Project Direct. It is searching for films between two and seven minutes in duration. Twenty finalists will be chosen by a YouTube panel and director Jason Reitman whose film "Juno" will be released by Fox Searchlight this year. A grand-prize winner will then be selected.

In order to make the contest more interesting, Reitman set three content rules for the submissions. He requires the films feature a, "character facing 'a situation above his or her maturity level,' one character in the film must pass a photograph to another, and someone in the film must use the line, 'I demand an explanation for these shenanigans. What do you have to say?' " I think these guidelines will definitely ad humor to the films and make them unique.

To learn more about Project Direct visit their link from YouTube: http://youtube.com/projectdirect. I think this contest will be a great way to promote YouTube, HP and Fox Searchlight Productions. Hopefully many people will enter and there will be some great submissions!

Here is YouTube video were Reitman describes the contest:


The article discussed was found at: http://promomagazine.com/news/
youtube_hp_video_makers_say_100807/

Evian and Second Life

An article on Promomagazine.com caught my eye because it pertains to Second Life - a topic my professor for Audience Research, Kim Gregson, is very interested and blogs about. The article I found is about Evian Natural Spring Water and Second Life. After reading the article I was curious to learn more about Second Life as I am not very familiar with it, so I visited Kim's blog. It is pretty cool and definitely worth taking a look at! Visit Kim's blog at http://profkim.blogspot.com/. Also if like me you are not very familiar with second life visit the Second Life Web site to read what it's all about! Second Life is basically a 3-D virtual world inhabited by residents from around the world.

Now to the article - the article I came across pertaining to Second Life discusses how Evian Natural Spring Water is using Second Life to promote its product. Evian is putting vending machines in high-traffic locations around the 3-D world of Second Life. Evian consumers can now give their "virtual bodies" a chances to drink the water. When someones avatar (graphic character which represents them) approaches an Evian vending machine a message will pop up offering them to "give their skin a 'second life' with a bottle of Evian." If they accept they can then choose from various new natural skins for their avatar. The avatar will then receive a better texture and better lighting. Here is what the vending machines look like:
I think Evian's use of Second Life to promote their product is an excellent idea. More and more people are beginning to visit virtual worlds and if Evian is one of the first companies to advertise on Second Life they will definitely raise a tremendous amount of awareness about their product. In the article, Jeff Caswell, vice president of marketing for Evian North America states his reasoning for placing Evian in Second Life. Caswell says, "With build-it-yourself virtual worlds, fantasy lands and video games increasing in popularity, we felt that Second Life was a fitting platform for Evian to make its virtual debut." Hats off to Caswell and Evian because I think this is a great idea! All you Second Life users keep an eye out for the Evian vending machines!

Here is an introduction to Second Life:


The article discussed can be found at: http://promomagazine.com/news/evian
_tests_waters_second_life_100407/