Crisp ‘n Dry have an on-pack promotion to win a £10,000 kitchen, via a prize draw in May 2011. Also up for grabs are minor prizes of food processors, deep fat fryers, woks, potato chippers and cookbooks. It’s an enticing prize selection for the target market and is part of the ‘From Good Food to Great Food’ campaign that aims to attract new consumers to the brand.

The promotion was created by Propagate Promotions, for Edible Oils Ltd. Propagate were tasked with leveraging the appeal of Crisp ‘n Dry against cheaper supermarket own-brand vegetable cooking oils and educating consumers on the health benefits and versatility of the oil. Continue reading ‘Win Your Dream Kitchen with Crisp ‘n Dry’

I went to check out a ‘Win’ mechanic that I saw on my morning muffins. I read the URL and accidentally typed in a mis-spelling. The correct URL is www.russellhobbs.co.uk/hovis but I typed russelhobbs.co.uk/hovis. This took me to a cybersquatted site containing links to Russell Hobbs, kitchen appliances, kettles, home appliances, coffee makers and espresso makers. rusellhobbs.com/hovis goes to a similar page, and russellhobs.com/hovis is also parked by a third party. Continue reading ‘How Russell Hobbs loses customers to cybersquatters’

Müller Light has an on-pack promotion to win a £1,000 shopping spree every day. I think this is a perfect fit with the target market and the time of year. Fat free yogurt is appealing to women starting a post-Christmas diet, and a £1,000 shopping spree could be just the incentive they need to counter the post-Christmas bank balance. The entry code is the batch code on the lid, and you enter at mullerlightspree.co.uk. The problem with using batch codes as entry codes is that they can be very confusing for the consumer. I was told “Your code is invalid” if I entered the code without spaces, with space, without the colon in the time, with the colon in the time. I checked online and realised that I had to enter the date as well. This worked and I moved on to the data collection screen. Continue reading ‘Win a £1,000 shopping spree with Müller Light’

@daily is attracting followers like wildfire on Twitter today despite never having tweeted. It became apparent that it’s likely to be the official Twitter account of Rupert Murdoch’s new iPad-only newspaper. The Daily is thought to be the flagship paper for a new iTunes newspaper subscription model. Can Apple do for the news and magazine industry what they did for music and video? My feeling is no. The strong trend is towards free news content and I can’t see this being reversed by closed format tablet apps.

From April, Apple will no longer allow publishers to offer free iPad editions to print subscribers. This is consistent with the expected new strategy.

Seth Godin says in ‘The certainty premium‘ that “Works every time” is a great promise to make to your boss.

It may be a great promise, but it’s clearly untrue. I’d have grave reservations about anyone that made this promise to me. Uncertainty is one of the things I actively look for in prospective employees as it’s the doorway to collaboration and learning in online marketing.

It doesn’t mean he isn’t right though. Marketing isn’t about truth; it’s about persuasion, and certainty persuades better than uncertainty. The very best marketing slogans are confident and certain:

• Takes a licking and keeps on ticking. – Timex
• Just do it. – Nike
• Think different. – Apple Macintosh
• Beanz meanz Heinz. – Heinz Baked Beans
• Have a break. Have a Kit-Kat. – Kit Kat

You just have to be careful who you’re making these promises to.