Catching up on the DVR this weekend, I was watching the season finale of “My Name is Earl” when a great brand integration caught my attention. It turns out that Klondike Bar is bringing back their great jingle of “What would you do for a Klondike Bar” and blasting the message across multiple new media channels.
Nostalgia is a powerful marketing tool
Many brand managers/agencies suffer from NCH (Not Created Here), causing them to turn their back on great campaigns/jingles of old. But the smart folks at Klondike are embracing nostalgia in their campaign, but doing it through new tools with Consumer Generated Media, Branded Entertainment and Public Relations.
First, the whole campaign revolves around the “What would you do” contest where you can submit a video showing just what you would do for that Klondike. The top video will be $100K and the chance to meet “The Lonely Island “ team (which in itself is a huge prize for aspiring comedians/writers). Second, they created what I thought was a pretty natural integration with “My Name is Earl” where Randy proceeds to do several “wacky” things to get a Klondike Bar. Third they tied this integration and contest together with spots throughout the show promoting the contest (the spots alone made me laugh out loud…much to the annoyance of my girlfriend). Finally, they added a dose of PR with an appearance on Jay Leno to promote the contest as well. Interestingly, both Earl and Leno are on NBC so this seems to be a top-to-top integration.
All in all, I have to say this is a great way to do Consumer/User Generated Media and New Media thanks to the following:
- Klondike didn’t just rely on traditional media & :30 second spots to promote the contest.
- They gave consumers a “Creative Brief” to follow with a specific framework “What Would Do” and specific categories: Laughs, Did You See that?, and Flaunt It.
- They gave incentives for submitting videos ($$$ and trip) AND for watching/engaging with the videos ($25K for watching/rating videos)
- They didnt walk away from nostalgia and try to create a new tagline. More marketers need to stop spending millions to generate awareness of a new tagline that no consumer really cares about anyways.
What do you think? Did Klondike do it right? What elements would you have added or gotten rid of?
Tags: CGM, Consumer Generated Media, contest, klondike, unilever, user generated media, usg
I think Klondike did get it right. The move to include Jay was genius, and I don’t think you can argue with providing an incentive to both submit and rate video! These types of campaigns really do work to create a true brand experience and keep people connected.
There’s one thing I would add, a way to share the video. I may have missed it, but I hope that there is some way for users to easily integrate these videos into their profiles on social networking sites (facebook, myspace, etc) and share with friends.
Great point on sharing the video. I’m curious to see if this will change when you are actually able to go rate videos in the next couple of weeks
Great way to utilize low cost “Information Age” mediums such as blogging/you tube videos to build consumer interest/PR/marketing (plus the 100K tag line doesn’t hurt, ha). Empowering consumers to have a sense of control over essentially a marketing campaign is powerful, and generates loyalty + awareness. Utilizing the wonderful human emotion of humor/laughter is genius, creates a ‘fun’ aura, and bonds with consumers as a ‘positive/fun’ product. Adding the ‘fun factor’ with creatively engaging with consumers to create an ad, is awesome. This has become a huge trend, and at times is a huge win, and at other times, can be detrimental to educated consumers. Thoughts of ‘why do they need ‘civilians’ to produce commercials when they have their own Brand/MKTG teams can produce negative thoughts (to some, not all) of incompetence since it’s consumer generated vs. something they’re ‘told/fed’ that they like. Personally, I appreciate the opportunity to influence a product/service, chance to be creative, and being involved with projects… Can’t wait to see who ‘wins’! Do you think they will fire their creative dept. and rely on outsiders to build ideas (kidding, ha). All in all, it’s a ‘win-win-win’ , and you can’t beat teaming with NBC (a GE company) – ‘imagination at work’! Now all they need to do is add ‘Conan’ and something from ‘The Office’ (which invited people to share their funny office moments, genius, you know we all have them!)
later Dave,
B
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