August 6, 2012
CPGmatters: ‘Brand Unity’ Brings Together Pepsi and Kroger for Creative Promotions
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is a summary of a current article from the monthly e-zine, CPGmatters.
What NASCAR fan would not want to design Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s race car? That’s the grand prize in a new digital promotion co-sponsored by Pepsi’s Diet Mountain Dew and Kroger.
"This year, Diet Dew and Kroger are giving you more design options, more decals and more ways to make my car your own," the legendary race car driver tells visitors to www.paintthe88.com. The promotion repeats last year’s version that invited race car fans online to a virtual auto-body paint shop to design the No. 88 Diet Dew/National Guard Chevrolet.
This year’s digital happening is the latest in a series of interactive promotions that Pepsi Beverages Co. has conducted with Kroger. The brand marketer has a name for this creative collaboration — brand unity.
"It’s all about finding the common bond between the retailer’s brand story and our brand story. Once we find that common bond, which is the core message that both stories are trying to convey, we use it as a creative springboard for ideas," said Ken Krasnow, senior marketing director for shopper marketing at Pepsi Beverages Co.
In outlining the "brand unity" strategy, he acknowledged the challenge of having two brands — Pepsi and Kroger — to tell one story. The common bond for these brands is "celebrating the individual." Race car fans feel that Mountain Dew is listening to their design ideas. Kroger shoppers are treated as individuals because they get customized offers online or through direct mail. Kroger is well known for its robust analytics of loyalty card data.
"It is all about that one-to-one connection," Mr. Krasnow said.
The notion of celebrating the individual in a fun way underscored the race car promotion from start to finish. In the pre-shop phase, consumers learned about the design contest via a digital newsletter. Pepsi also advertised on Dale Earnhardt’s website where fans were invited to unleash their creative juices in the virtual auto-body paint shop. He tweeted about the program and posted comments about it on Facebook where he invited fans to submit designs and urged others to do so, too.
The program netted over two million page views on the site last year. Some 10,000 designs were submitted and Mr. Earnhardt finally selected one for his car.
According to Mr. Krasnow, the promotion engaged Kroger shoppers by giving them "a really cool NASCAR experience."
He stressed that the "human connection" is critical for brands in order to
create meaning. Really good brands do three things:
- Support our identity — how we see ourselves and who we aspire to be.
- Help us navigate through the clutter so we can make quick decisions for ourselves and our families.
- Inspire us.
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Discussion Questions
Discussion Questions: What do you think of the concept of “brand unity” and finding common ground between a retailer and a CPG brand from which to build? What factors are key to successful co-promotions?
Poll
Getting the consumer involved is the name of the new game. From TV shows that have viewers vote to writing commercials and designing race cars. Just like games of the past, there is only one winner. What is different is, the winner now has a voice.
“Brand unity” is a fancy term for account specific promotions. Account specific promotions have been around for decades. Pepsi and Kroger have found a way to create a promotion that captures each of their core stories and delights consumers. Sounds like a win-win to me.
The idea of “brand unity” is a good one. It’s a win-win-win all around for the retailer, manufacturer and consumer. With the increased usage of smart phones and tablets, we will see more interactive promotions targeted towards specific groups of consumers. As long as the consumer targeting is correct and there is a symbiotic relationship between retailer and brand, the “brand unity” promotions should be a huge success.
The concept of “brand unity” builds on the traditional aspects of co-promotions with a customized consumer focused message and offer. It is clearly enabled by the targeting capacity of loyalty card data.
At its best, these types of targeted, customized events are a win-win-win for the brand, the retailer, and the consumer. However, there are also economies of scale, which may mean these types of co-promotions will work better for large brands with multiple segments to target.
If you’re big enough to do this, and are fortunate to get cooperation from a giant like Pepsi, it should do very well. This takes a lot of promotion from both sides, and it should do very well.
Win-Win is right! This collaboration is a prime example of retail marketing a la 21st. Century. With “consumer as king” more than ever before, these partnerships are the perfect blending of retailers’ ability to generate traffic, and the manufacturers’/brands’ ability to generate sales.
I’m with Max. This is account specific promotion by any other name.
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Getting the consumer involved is the name of the new game. From TV shows that have viewers vote to writing commercials and designing race cars. Just like games of the past, there is only one winner. What is different is, the winner now has a voice.
“Brand unity” is a fancy term for account specific promotions. Account specific promotions have been around for decades. Pepsi and Kroger have found a way to create a promotion that captures each of their core stories and delights consumers. Sounds like a win-win to me.
The idea of “brand unity” is a good one. It’s a win-win-win all around for the retailer, manufacturer and consumer. With the increased usage of smart phones and tablets, we will see more interactive promotions targeted towards specific groups of consumers. As long as the consumer targeting is correct and there is a symbiotic relationship between retailer and brand, the “brand unity” promotions should be a huge success.
The concept of “brand unity” builds on the traditional aspects of co-promotions with a customized consumer focused message and offer. It is clearly enabled by the targeting capacity of loyalty card data.
At its best, these types of targeted, customized events are a win-win-win for the brand, the retailer, and the consumer. However, there are also economies of scale, which may mean these types of co-promotions will work better for large brands with multiple segments to target.
If you’re big enough to do this, and are fortunate to get cooperation from a giant like Pepsi, it should do very well. This takes a lot of promotion from both sides, and it should do very well.
Win-Win is right! This collaboration is a prime example of retail marketing a la 21st. Century. With “consumer as king” more than ever before, these partnerships are the perfect blending of retailers’ ability to generate traffic, and the manufacturers’/brands’ ability to generate sales.
I’m with Max. This is account specific promotion by any other name.