Archive for March, 2009

Talk about a unique way to make your product stand out on shelf…. These fruit juice boxes were designed by Japanese industrial designer, Naoto Fukasawa, that have the look and feel of the fruit they contain. 

Guitar Hero put forth a new TV spot to run during the NCAA tournament to promote their new Guitar Hero Metallica game. Check it out here. They feature some key NCAA coaches as well as the members of Metallica in the ad to deliver the message. It’s a great spin off of their Guitar Hero World Tour campaign. And, if you really pay attention, there are some small details that make the spot one to remember.

Old Navy cast a lineup of “SuperModelquins” to star in a marketing campaign that broke last month.

Targeting the chain’s predominant shopper base of 25-to-35-year-old moms, the integrated campaign introduces 12 diverse mannequin “celebrities” that share a common liking for Old Navy fashion. The campaign plays out through spectaculars in stores, TV spots that air primarily during prime time, Internet ads and a dedicated microsite. A direct-mail program delivers coupons and “trading cards” of the Modelquins, each of which has been given a backstory. (Some are married to fellow Modelquins, while others are single or divorced parents.)

Mimicking celebrity magazines, an “Old Navy Weekly” flier was inserted into the March 1 issue ofUs Weekly, as well as in newspapers. The insert followed the typical format of a celebrity magazine by touting a “SuperModelquin Exclusive” and a shocker headline, “Yes They’re Fake,” with an inside spread titled “They do what we do” that mirrors Us Weekly’s “Stars, they’re just like us” section. Stanchion signs in stores spotlight the “magazine” cover, while window posters boast, “As Seen in ON Weekly.”

The Modelquins also appear on banners in various sections of the store. For instance, “Amy” appears in the women’s apparel department on signs that read, “Amy Lives for the $5, $10, $15 shop” — a new merchandising section addressing the economy-driven move toward value.

The campaign was created by Miami, FL-based Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. It’s the agency’s first work for Old Navy after besting five other shops for the account in fall 2008. It’s also the first major campaign under the leadership of Old Navy president Tom Wyatt, who officially took the post in August 2008 after serving as interim president for six months.

Source: In-Store Marketing Institute, March 2009 

NASCAR fans will be able to see first hand the true benefits of Lysol Disinfectant when visiting one of the “Lysol Clean” bathrooms at nine races this year.

The bathrooms, for women only, are a fresh component in a larger campaign that Lysol is rolling out this year around its NASCAR sponsorship. The goal is to educate families about the importance of using disinfectant to help protect against germs and other illnesses.

“In NASCAR, so often we’re talking to the male target, so to have this program that is hitting that 40% of the fans who are women is really one of the unique things about the program,” said Tamera Green, vice president and group account director at GMR, which developed and is executing the promotion in conjunction with Catapult Marketing.

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A stroll past Macy’s famous windows in New York finds a rather unique display: a home setting showing off Clorox Disinfecting Wipes.

This is the first such partnership between the iconic retailer and Clorox that aims to showcase the redesigned packaging as not your traditional looking cleaning product, but rather something that should be displayed and used around the home on an everyday basis.

“We were really trying to think about something that would be unexpected, because the product itself is unexpected, said Lisa Partnoy, the marketing manager for the brand. “People would normally not think about displaying a cleaning product.”

The theme of the window displays tie in to the New York store’s spring campaign, Welcome Back Color, and its home store. The windows along the 7th Avenue side of the Herald Square store display a home kitchen scene with a backdrop of spring colors recreated to match the colors of the wipes eight new packaging designs.

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With all this talk about stimulus packages and bailouts, ever wonder what one trillion dollars really looks like? I know I have. Now thanks to a nifty program called Google Sketchup we can see it in a simple illustration…. check it out at pagetutor.com

Call it an anti-promotion: In an attempt to eliminate some low-spending customers from its cardholder roster, American Express Co. has announced it is offering to pay some holders to close their accounts.

In what the company told analysts is a “small pilot program,” an undisclosed number of American Express cardholders have received mail offers that would reward them with a $300 prepaid American Express gift card for paying down their credit balances and closing their accounts.

The accounts must be settled and closed either by the end of March or of April, depending on the holder’s billing cycle, and the customers receiving the offer must accept by the end of this month, according to press reports.

Full Article

Skittles has recently launched a new homepage at Skittles.com that features content generated by consumers, which is quite the departure from a typical brand’s product site. Mars Snackfood says it redesigned the site to better connect with its core teenage audience, which spends a lot of time using social media. The new site is already generating a lot of buzz; If you click on the Chatter tab you can see what’s being said about Skittles on Twitter in real time. They also have links to pages dedicated to Skittles on Wikipedia, Facebook, and YouTube. Skittles has little control over who participates and what is said, making this a rather risky campaign. Depending on the results of this experiment, maybe we’ll see more brands putting their messaging into the hands of consumers, or maybe not. Do they really want to highlight things like consumers using skittles to flavor and color vodka? Consumers sure do have some unexpected uses for their favorite products!

Read the full article from the WSJ about this new strategy: Skittles Cozies Up to Social Media

Topps is introducing some new technology to the baseball trading cards industry in hopes of increasing sales. They have created special cards called Topps 3D Live baseball cards, that when held in front of a webcam, a 3D avatar of the player on the card will appear on your computer screen. Not only does the player rotate on the screen as you rotate the card, but you can also play pitching, catching, and hitting games with your 3D player using your keyboard, creating an additional interactive element. According to a recent article in the New York Times, the once $1 billion dollar industry has since shrunk to $200 million in yearly revenue, due in part to consumers getting more of their sport facts on the internet. The company hopes this bold technology will help rejuvenate interest and make trading cards relevant again. To read the full article from the New York Times and view a video of this cool technology in action go to Webcam Brings 3-D to Topps Sports Cards

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They’ve recently begun a TV campaign promoting their services. You can check out their commercials on the site, too!