Company: Leading Brands Inc.
Timeframe: Nov. 2007 - June 2008
Although there are many marketers who still harbor deep apprehension about running campaigns in the social networking sites, others have taken to it like proverbial ducks to
water. Recently, the Vancouver-based Leading Brands Inc., a manufacturer and distributor of healthy beverages, ran an online trivia contest, "Win with True Blue," which was
designed to promote the launch of a new beverage product, True Blue. Attracting over 550,000 entrants, the program generated a viral buzz that made Leading Brands seriously
consider doing a similar program for another of its beverages, Stoked Energy.
Thus, in late 2007, the company set to work defining the target audience for the Stoked Energy Gamer Challenge program. According to Jill McRae, who handles marketing at
Leading Brands, the target audience they came up with for the Challenge had a lot to do with whom the Stoked Energy drink was formulated to appeal to historically--people who
don't traditionally drink energy beverages. For this group, McRae and her team "decided to make it for people who work outside the energy drink box."
Thinking Outside The Gaming Console
To further drive home the fact that the audience was different from the traditional energy drink crowd, Leading Brands sought to bring a different nuance to the marketing for
the Stoked Energy Gamer Challenge. Because of the tremendous popularity of video games, the program was skewed to appeal to the 17-to-35-year-old demographic that greatly enjoys
this pastime. Leading Brands also strove to find and cultivate professional video gamers who they could deploy across the country to act as ambassadors for the Stoked Energy
Challenge.
"We decided that we really like video gamers--they're an intelligent group of people," says McRae. "The largest percentage of energy drinkers are heads of households, which is
kind of astonishing. But if you hang around a 7-Eleven, you'll find that the majority of energy drinks sold in that store were sold in the early morning to truck drivers and
construction drivers--adult males. Some of them buy two or three of them [at a time]."
There's also the youth market, comprised of male and female college students who regularly imbibe energy drinks, notes McRae.
To lend this program a certain aura of legitimacy, Leading Brands "went out and found a couple of professional gaming teams," recounts McRae. "We sponsored them, sent them to
events and did a lot more innovative stuff like setting up a Stoked Energy lounge in a hotel where gamers are [attending] an event. There, we offer free pizza and everyone hangs
out."
The program is being directed at both males and females. "[Video gaming is] actually growing on the female front as is the energy drink market because people are going outside
the box and appealing to women--sugar-free and different things like that," explains McRae.
Building A Network
To ratchet up the grassroots components of the program, McRae and her team homed in on using the social networking sites. It seemed like a natural extension of what they wanted
to achieve with the launch of the Stoked Energy Gamer Challenge: heighten awareness of the brand while letting video gamers in North America know that Leading Brands wanted to
work with them by offering something creative.
"There's really crossover between the two entities: video gamers and the energy drink market," says McRae. "One of the guys in the marketing department here has a lot of
experience with Facebook. He came in one day and told us that Starbucks just made an application on it. [This was] the first one I've seen that actually has made sense--it's just
trying to advertise a brand. They have an application where you can click on it anywhere in the world and it will tell you where the nearest Starbucks is to where you're standing.
That got us thinking about what can we do with an application. We decided to come up with a trivia challenge where gamers would be asked questions."
Leading Brands then approached Activision, the video game developer and publisher, for their assistance. The Leading Brands team shaped the concept and Activision contributed
their services.
Of Activision's participation in the program, McRae says, "When we approached them about the concept of the Gamer Challenge, Activision only wanted to be involved in a
peripheral way. [They allowed] us to use their imagery and provided us with trivia questions on their video game."
Emulating the popular "Call of Duty IV" video game, Leading Brands designed the Stoked Energy Gamer Challenge as an online trivia contest, "which is about gaming in general
and, more specifically, 'call of duty' on the bonus questions," McRae says. Also included are facts and figures on world gaming.
Details on playing the game are as follows: "The way we've done the contest is you go on every day and you get one point for playing a general gaming trivia question," explains
McRae. "You get two points for bonus questions, specifically about 'call of duty.' And you get five points every time you send the application to refer a friend and they actually
download and play. The model was built that just by playing every single day and referring a friend, you're going to give yourself eight entries into the contest."
McRae feels the Challenge is stimulating and fun enough to attract interest from prospective players. "We've made an application that we hope people in gaming would like to
play," says McRae. The contest, which was launched March 15, 2008, will run until June 15. Winners can win prizes as high as $10,000.
Catching The Viral Bug
Leading Brands, which does all of its in-house creative materials without the help of an outside agency, has relied on word of mouth to promote the Stoked Energy Gamer
Challenge to its target audience. "We've gone out through the social networkers into groups and MySpace networks," says McRae.
In addition to using the network of contacts from the 60 professional gamers they are currently sponsoring, Leading Brands is also bringing the marketing to the retail level.
"We're talking to our chains across Canada and our listings in the U.S. saying
this is how we support the brand," explains McRae. "Some of [our salespeople
at these chains] are looking to come on board with posters and stuff at the
store level to where we're selling the drinks." Information on the Challenge
is also prominently featured on the beverage brand's Web site, http://www.stokedenergy.com.
As exciting as it's been for the Leading Brands team to brainstorm the Stoked Energy Challenge, its jarring uniqueness has also been a challenge. "This is a really new
ballgame," says McRae. "It's really different to take a contest that looks the same on a Web site and put it inside an application that also looks the same within Facebook and
MySpace. In fact, I've never seen it done before."
Creating the application for the social network sites presented other snags that McRae did not expect. Before the application could be put on the sites, it had to be approved
and vetted. The process ended up delaying the launch of the Stoked Energy Gamer Challenge.
"One of the hiccups that we've had is that this is pretty cutting edge," says McRae. "There was no application on MySpace. We were the first batch to come out in the world and
the reason why we were the first batch is, while we were in development, MySpace and Facebook both came forward and said 'Oh, by the way, you can't just throw out the application
anymore, you have to go through an approval process.' So, we got things designed as quickly as we could, threw it into the process and came out the other end, but we came out a
week late from when we launched the competition."
Because the program has just begun, McRae can't quote an exact figure as to how many people have signed up to play the Stoked Energy Gamer Challenge, but she thinks it may be a
considerable number. "Probably we're somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000 people playing daily now," she says. "I'm thinking it's one of those exponentially growing models where,
once it starts to take off, 10 people start to tell 10 people [and so on]."
But not all of the buzz surrounding the Challenge has been confined to WOM or viral marketing.
McRae says that one media outlet that covered the Challenge in a one-off article is Marketing Magazine, a national weekly in Canada.
Staying On Target
Though the program is still in its early stages, McRae does feel its goals are being met because it doesn't patronize its target audience.
"The first measurement of success for me is what the buzz on the street from the real gamers is. What are they saying? You can go onto the blogs and read what they say. [The
feedback is] really good. That's the first measurement of success--you can't talk down to these guys. You have to talk their lingo and to their people. We've accomplished that.
We've tapped into how to talk to them, and that's through their peers."
Other ways that McRae can tell the program is fulfilling its objectives is in the sheer number of people she estimates is playing the game, as well as possibly driving up
sales of the Stoked Energy drink.
The latter is something she cannot verify because it's still too early to produce statistics. However, if sales are robust following the campaign, this may prove to McRae
"whether this type of marketing tool is actually working to get listings" and whether it can be parlayed to "sell through at the store level."
For McRae, the final metric of success will be determined on June 15, when the program ends and the data on sales start to trickle in.
For McRae's team, the lessons learned from working on this Challenge are still to be determined.
"We're very optimistic about the feedback we're getting. The 'Win with True Blue' program didn't get rolling until we were six weeks into it, and then the momentum started to
build. I think this is going to be similar. Apart of the approval process throwing a curve ball in our timing, we really worked round the clock to get that through. We're in the
excitement stage of this."
In the meantime, there is talk of launching another online video gaming program attached to one of Leading Brands' other beverages. However, the chatter is still in its
preliminary phase.
"We'll find something else we can offer," says McRae. "It might be another game. It might be something else entirely but we will reestablish a summer game challenge that will
be really big because a lot of people are out of school. It might be Guitar Hero. We don't know what it's going to be. We're still thinking about it." PRN
CONTACT:
Jill McRae, [email protected]
Holding Your Tongue, Controlling Your Tone
For other companies interested in implementing a similar online video game as the focal point for their campaigns, Jill McRae, who handles marketing for Leading Brands Inc.,
has this advice:
"You can't talk down to this particular demographic of kids [who are the target audience for this type of challenge]. And when I mean kids, I'm talking anywhere from 17 to 35.
This generation that's out there in this market is very tech-savvy, so if you're going to put together anything online, you have to hire experts that are of that demographic that
can talk to those guys in their own lingo. You can't be a stuffed shirt in an office trying to talk to them online. You have to be talking with your own people. [With us], we have
creative people on staff, and we use them to talk to their peers. For us to expand into a marketing opportunity there, it's not a big stretch. [You just] have to find people to
bridge the gap."