Mkt3500 - off-The-Wall Marketing: Highlight Truly Innovative Promotional Campaigns

Martin Gu (Chencheng)

MKT3500

Ph. Brett Boyle

10/22/2015

Off-the-wall Marketing: Highlight Truly Innovative Promotional

Campaigns

"Get a dozens of Krispy Kreme doughnuts for $3.99..." this highly appealing title brought to my attention immediately when I was reading through on Twitter one night. After reading the article, I realize that I wasn't eligible for the free doughnuts because it was a promotion campaign offered by Krispy Kreme in North and South Carolina only on that specific day because the Caroline Panthers won the day before.

I did feel slightly disappointed not being able to have some delicious doughnuts at a very low price. But my excitement and curiosity quickly took over my disappointment. I thought to myself, "What a great way for Krispy Kreme to promote their business in North and South Carolina it was!" By doing a promotion campaign working with the Panthers and spreading the words through social media, Krispy Kreme can not only increase their sales and successfully promote their brand in South and North Carolina but also to a wide range of Panthers fans. Since Panthers fans are eager for the Panthers' winning and the promotion only takes effect after any victory of Panthers' and also the promotion campaign will last for an entire season, a lot of fans would be excited for both the Panthers' winning as well as the promotion. Because to certain extend, the exuberance from the winning of their supporting team would be transferred to the deals even if some of the Panthers' supporters don't necessarily like Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It is the same situation when Papa John's offers a 40% off deal the day after a Saint Louis Cardinal's winning. As a matter of fact, they have been doing this promotion campaign for the last several seasons. So it is evident that this innovative and unique way of promotional campaign has been successful. But are there any other truly innovative campaigns related to sports?

Taking this question with me, I did several researches and I ended up finding out that there have actually many other innovational promotional campaigns that have taken place in the sports world. Some of them are innovative while some of them are even kind of crazy. So

I'm going to introduce you two more innovative promotional campaigns that are related to sports.

"ThisGirlCan" Video Campaign

In the beginning of this year, Sport England, an English council that is committed to providing services and funding to all kinds of sports in England,launched a video online and it surprisingly generated almost 1 million views only within 3 days after the video was uploaded.

The video starts off with a woman with a bathing suit walking towards a swimming pool, a second woman in a soccer game and another about to serve a volley, one putting gumshield on, a group of mid-aged ones with their swimming goggles on, another one running up to a hill at dawn, yet another one and anther one... Apparently it is about a group of women exercising and playing all kinds of sports. But more importantly, all of the women shown in the video are the women that we are familiar with in real life; they are those women we see in our daily life; they might not be young, fit or physically attractive athletes. But with one thing in common, they are all focused on whatever sports they are playing and they are enjoying themselves. Several slogans popped up that conveyed the theme of the video. "Sweating like a pig, feeling like a fox", "I kick balls, deal with it", "I swim because I love my body. Not because I hate it'...

just to name a few.

Those slogan shed lights on the themes of the video. The video is not only encouraging women to participate into sports but also to prompt them to change their attitude when taking part of all kinds of sports. It is a fact that women are encouraged and becoming more active in doing sports nowadays. But this video campaign unveiled a great information behind the fact.

Which is that a lot of women are forcing themselves to play sports or to work out because they are worried of their body shape and they are not enjoying themselves doing sports.

According to a research conducted by Sport England [1], two million more men play sports regularly than women during age 14-40 in England while 75% of the women said that they wanted to do more. What's more, they found out the reason behind it was because women in England were judged against because of their body type or weight when playing sports. [2] Also a lot of women were worried of being not fit enough or lacking of skill when considering playing sports based purely on their gender or their body shape. And that's the reason why Sport England launched this video as well as this campaign in order to empower and encourage women in England to get involved into playing sports regardless of others' judgments. Just as the video shows, women of all sizes, all shapes, all ages and all levels of ability can play sports. Targeting at the right people and basing on the right reasons, the video has had over 13 million viewers online and this campaign named as "This Girl Can" by Sport