Category Archives: Advertising

Staples Looking for Ten Thousand Winners

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Staples is running a promotion called Gift It for Free that is a sweepstakes that will have 10,000 winners who can fill up a shopping cart and get all the items for free. The promotion is running until Christmas Eve so visit the site and enter to win.

The promotion came to my attention because a rep from one of their agencies emailed me about it and about their social media efforts for the promotion, including a Facebook fan page, a Twitter profile, and several YouTube videos.  They've created a character called Coach Tom who believes there should only be one winner in anything (a play on the 10,000 winners) and they have fun with that theme with the videos.  I've pasted one below and if you click through to YouTube you'll see that there's several videos and they're pretty good. 

Commercial Done Right

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Let's be honest.  Most commercials on TV, well, suck.  I mean really stink.  That's why I love it when I see one that not only entertains me, but actually informs me about the product.  The E-Trade baby commercials fit the bill perfectly, especially this one:

Me Thinks This Olympic Gymnast Needs New Media Advisor

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Shawn Johnson won gold and silver medals in gymnastics at the recently concluded 08 Summer Games in Beijing.  Obviously it’s time for her to cash in and help her parents pay off the multiple mortgages they took out to finance her Olympic dream.  I’m thinking she can do better than the Ortega commercial below.  Let’s just say that people online are having fun with her line, "Ortega makes my taco pop." 

links for 2008-08-20

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OfficeMax’s Penny Campaign

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OfficeMax has an interesting ad campaign online.  It’s a video  (see below) showing a guy paying for a steak dinner with pennies.  The proprietors of the restaurant aren’t too happy with him and argue with him about why they should accept pennies.  The video may or may not be staged, but it doesn’t matter because it’s funny.  At the end of the video OfficeMax has a little "Power of the Penny" graphic promoting all the back-to-school items you can buy for a penny and the end screen has the www.officemax.com/penny URL.

I like this because although the video isn’t specifically about back to school items it’s a humorous look at the ongoing debate about the value of pennies.  Lots of people think the penny should go the way of all flesh, but OfficeMax has found a way to use the debate to their advantage.

BTW, I found the video on video humor site Glumbert.com.

Cross-posted on LowderEnterprises.com

Can’t Do Much Better Than Free Advertising

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If you’d like to advertise for free then head over to React Media. Looks like there’s an offer for free ad hosting until August 1, 2008.  If you can put together a 150 x 200 pixel JPG then all you have to do is send it to him and you’re gonna be an online advertiser.  It looks like they’re even offering to help create the ad if you aren’t up to it. 

Normally this ad space would cost you $100/month so don’t hesitate. Once I figure out what I have that’s worth selling I’ll be on this in a flash.

Winston-Salem Journal Needs to Edit Email a Bit More Carefully

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Journalemail
Long ago I signed up for the Winston-Salem Journal’s email alert service.  I don’t know if I also signed up for their advertisers’ messages or if it’s part of the package when you sign up for the alerts, but a few months ago I also started receiving those alerts.  Well, a couple of minutes ago I received one of their advertising messages for Harris Teeter and there’s a slight problem.  They apparently forgot to change the "From" field of the message because instead of saying something like "JournalNow.com Special Harris Teeter Prize Offer" it says "JournalNow.com Breaking News: WFU coach Skip Prosser dies".  (Click on the image to the left to see a screen shot of the email).

The death of Skip Prosser was a big and tragic story here last week and it’s unfortunate for the folks at Harris Teeter that their ad message is being associated with a mistake that I think everyone will find tacky at best.  More likely Journal readers will find it highly insensitive and the kind of mistake that just shouldn’t happen.

Update: I just received another email from JournalNow apologizing for the first.  Here’s the text:

Moments ago, you received a very unfortunate e-mail from JournalNow.com.

The e-mail was supposed to contain an advertising message sent by JournalNow for Harris Teeter.

While the message did contain the Harris Teeter information, it also came to you using a “From” line that had been used last week on a Breaking News message: the death of Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser.

This juxtaposition was completely inappropriate and inexcusable, and I’d like to personally apologize for the mistake. No disrespect was meant to Skip Prosser or his family.

JournalNow, not Harris Teeter, takes full responsibility for the error. I will assure you that every effort will be made not to have anything like it happen again.

Mark C. Anderson
General Manager
JournalNow.com

I received the first email at 12:39 and the apology at 1:08.  That’s some good response time, which leads me to believe that they probably caught their mistake even before the first complaint hit their email server.

Oh, and Esbee points out in the comments that the contest ends December 26, 2006.  That means that either the Journal ran the wrong ad art or the ad rep for Harris Teeter is in seriously deep doo-doo.