Just a Little Giveaway...

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Southwest Airlines Offers Treats for Tweets

The marketing department at Southwest Airlines noticed that its number of followers on www.twitter.com was about to hit 20,000. It was a Friday afternoon and they were about 200 followers away when they had an idea: offer a gift pack loaded with branded merchandise to one lucky winner.

Not long after the idea struck, the announcement was blasted out to Twitterers. "We were looking for a fun and energetic way to reach our customers," says Christie Day, a representative for Southwest Airlines. "Who doesn't like to receive free stuff? We had the swag all ready to go. We sent the box of Southwest goodies to a customer in New Mexico. We Twittered who won and he Twittered us back."

The winner received a branded sewing kit, shoe-shine kit, can coolers, drink coupons and other prizes. "We raided the closet and picked out our favorite promotional products," Day says. "Our customers travel a lot, so by providing them with baggage tags and other products, it helps with their trip."

Southwest also offers prizes on www.facebook.com to people who answer its "trivia question of the day." Overall, customers find social media engaging because someone at the brand is interacting with them. Offering promotional items takes it to another level because "they are excited to know someone is on the other end who has some cool prizes for them," Day says. "Twitter gives them the instant gratification that they want."

Day says that the simple Friday afternoon giveaway "created a lot of awareness. A lot of people started following us who didn't know we were on Twitter."

Pin This One on NASCAR Fans

NASCAR fans aren't shy about showing their love for racing. Whether it's shirts, hats or posters of their favorite drivers, they're proud to support their favorite sport. To help feed into this passion, as well as raise some money for a good cause, the NASCAR Foundation offers official NASCAR Day pins in exchange for a $5 donation.

The NASCAR Foundation, which began in 2004, has raised $6.5 million for the Children's Miracle Network and other children's charities. The linchpin of the drive has been, well, the collectible pins. Each year, the foundation offers a new pin. "It changes every year, making it a collectible," says Sarah Newman, marketing specialist for the NASCAR Foundation.

The pins are sold online, at events, and beginning this year, at A-Plus and Sunoco locations. Sunoco dubbed itself the official "Pin Stop" of the promotion, which ran from April 1 thru May 18.Celebrities like Will Ferrell and Kelly Clarkson have joined in each year to promote the cause. This year Kevin Costner served as the face for NASCAR Day (May 15)

Newman says that when she's working at the Foundation's booth at events, "people walk up in their NASCAR gear, and their hats and jerseys have pins all over them. A lot of people have the whole collection on their hat. They'll buy it, take it out of the wrapper and put it right on their hat. Five dollars is something most people can afford, so we're not asking a lot. When they are at the track buying food, it's an easy way for fans to help."

Snickers Invents its own Language

Are you fluent in Snacklish? Probably not. The nonsense language was invented by Mars Snackfood U.S. in support of its Snickers brand of candy bars. Snacklish turns every word or name into something that reminds people of a Snickers bar.

For example, ads tell people to visit the "Peanutarium" instead of the Planetarium. And in New York, ads tout "Patrick Chewing" instead of the beloved Knicks center Patrick Ewing.

In this vein, the brand hit 100 influential reporters with branded T-shirts that showed their names translated into Snacklish. For example, someone named John Kara became John Karamel, and so on.

"By taking Snickers' core equities like its unique ingredients and satisfaction, we are reminding our consumers why they love Snickers so much," says Carole Walker, vice president of integrated marketing communications for Mars. The company notes that there are 5,000 different languages spoken in the world today, each with its own unique set of words, phrases and expressions. "Now 'Snickers speak' can be added to the list, allowing Americans to have a whole new dialect for satisfaction that they can drop into their daily conversations."

These new expressions are being featured in TV ads, billboards, print executions and online. Taxi-top ads say "Snaxi" and "Satisflying" when at airports (the signs are GPS-enabled so the sign knows when to flash the nonsense word). Five-second ads before wrestling programming say "Put your hunger in a Nougaplex." In financial districts, out-of-home ads say "Get a degree in Snackanomics."

To learn this burgeoning language, consumers can visit www.snickers.com.

Dairy Queen Plays it Sweet with Bloggers

International Dairy Queen may be onto something. The fast food chain, which specializes in frozen treats, recently used a promotional product to "bribe" bloggers to write about its new Sweet Deals Menu.

After receiving more than 200,000 mentions in the blogosphere at other sites, the chain decide to debut its first blog at www.blog.dairyqueen.com. To get the conversation rolling, it offered gift cards to the first 250 bloggers to answer the question: "What deal would you make with us to try our new Sweet Deals Menu?"The menu offers 20,000 combinations of food, beverages and treats at value prices. The most creative blogger will win his or her choice of a Sweet Deal for free every week for a year. DQ rep Dean Peters says the launch of the "Creating smiles and stories" blog in conjunction with a national advertising campaign was a two-pronged approach to get people talking about the menu.

The blog, in particular, "was a natural opportunity for bloggers to earn incentives to get out there and talk about the sweet deals," Peters says. "It got people to not only talk about DQ and the DQ brand, but it also was a great way to speak about our first value menu.

"The chain selected $5 gift cards for the effort "because they are fairly easy to give out and they drive people back to DQ,”" Peters says. DQ is promoting the effort through its year-old Facebook fan page as well as via its traditional Web site, www.dairyqueen.com.

Captain D's Shirt: A Uniform of Rebellion

Captain D's has a simple message for consumers: It has sit-down quality food at fast-food prices. To announce this loud and clear, the 580-unit restaurant chain created a "What You Get" TV spot which took on Red Lobster head to head. People leaving a Red Lobster restaurant were intercepted and asked to taste Captain D's food. A customer says, "It looks like the same thing we just ate." The actor in the ad responds: "Same amount of food plus $30 back."

Red Lobster didn't take too kindly to this negative comparison campaign, and it issued a cease and desist letter to its smaller, feisty competitor in September. Rather than back down, Captain D's decided to counterattack by launching a microsite featuring a follow-up commercial, in which the same actor from the prior TV spot rips up the letter from Red Lobster's lawyers.

The first 1,000 consumers to visit the site received a free T-shirt that read: "I refuse to cease and desist." "Our advertising agency, Goodness Manufacturing, suggested we use T-shirts as a means of rewarding our valued D's Club members," says Sandy Smith, senior vice president of marketing for Captain D's. "We felt the message would be intriguing enough to get people to pay attention, so we could spread the message to friends and family. We hope they wear them with pride!"

Smith was pleased with results of the online follow-up campaign. "Our goal was to build awareness of our advertising message. We got lots of positive response from both our D's Club members and the press. We were amazed we gave away all the T-shirts by lunchtime of the first day."

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