Extreme Makeover: Sponsorship Edition (Episode #1)
Posted: 11/5/2009 3:23:04 PM by
Diane Knoepke | with 0 comments
Don’t be alarmed, at no point during this blog post will a floating ad featuring Ty Pennington jump out of this blog post and scream at you through a megaphone.
We all have our armchair quarterback moments, where we see something we would have done differently to enhance a campaign or partnership. And then we see some that nag us because they have potential and yet need a bit of an overhaul. Right partners, not-quite-right relationship.
Just a note: as we have so much merging and converging of ideas and relationship types in our industry today—I’m going to use “sponsorship” fairly broadly and cover corporate relationships like added-value advertising and cause marketing as well.
Woman’s Day and ARM & HAMMER Baking Soda
Before: The November 17 issue of Woman’s Day (WD) magazine featured, as all WD issues do, a masthead question, which editors and staff answer with a clever tip or heartfelt response that is graphically linked to their names. This issue’s question is “What’s your do-it-all holiday secret?” On the second page of the masthead, one of the staffers says she washes her produce with baking soda. (Hmm. Hadn’t heard that one before.) The next staffer over answers that she can clean everything with baking soda and adds “it’s nontoxic, and it deodorizes too.” You won’t be surprised to hear that I looked down and saw exactly what I expected to see: an ARM & HAMMER Baking Soda (A&H) ad along the bottom of the masthead pages. This added-value ad deal doesn’t give the reader much credit, and it feels a little unseemly. With some scrubbing, it could be a lot more effective for both partners.
After: Let’s take the A&H answers out of the mouths of the staffers and put them back into the mouth of A&H or, better yet Jill, the domestic dynamo on armandhammer.com. The ad could stay where it is on the bottom of the page and further customize the creative to have Jill answering the masthead question inside the ad. And now that we’ve met Jill, we could look to keep the conversation with her going by working to drive traffic online. WD has a nice Facebook and Twitter presence; A&H does not. Why not get Jill involved on WD’s social networks? If Jill’s tips are legit (which I have no reason to believe they’re not), this could definitely work. Once Jill’s accepted into the community, I could see WD staffers, or online community members, or both, being treated to an A&H home “lab” experience to try these things out and get a few days off from the housework. For further inspiration to this end, or proof that the concept has worked in the past, put Finding Betty Crocker on your winter reading list.
Stay tuned. . .more episodes to come.
Read more blog posts
Filed under: digital media, new media, non-traditional categories, activation