Sick children, tea & Wallace & Gromit – a very British affair

It’s been done before but you can’t help smile through a cynical face at the Wallace and Gromit Great British Tea Party. This time it’s to help sick children and coming up to Christmas with Children in Need around the corner who better to benefit at Christmas time.

Yorkshire Tea are the ideal brand partner for the Wallace and Gromit Great British Tea Party (WGGBTP) that runs between 4-11 November this year. The mechanic is the tried and tested one of have a tea party, invite people, everyone contributes and the proceeds are sent to Wallace and Gromit to spend on making sick kids live’s more comfortable.

 http://www.wallaceandgromitteaparty.org.uk/pages/home.htm

Macmillan Cancer have run these annually and there have been plenty of other brands who have also benefited from tea parties. The interesting angle here is that its Wallace and Gromit who are the lead brand and they are using the fact that it’s their 20th anniversary to do this. It’s their children’s foundation that will benefit.

As two of the UK’s most popular characters (Christmas telly just isn’t the same without them) they are in an ideal situation to be able to capture attention, create awareness of their children’s foundation and use their brand trust with mum’s up and down the country to inspire them to hold tea party’s and raise money.

Yorkshire Tea are the perfect brand partner and will clearly benefit from branding, direct marketing and vouchers with money off in all the tea party packs but I am sure that they are paying a good contribution to the foundation to be part of this and hopefully some of the marketing budget too.

Easy to be sceptical about a brand’s motives but this brand partnership naturally fits both Wallace and Gromit and Yorkshire Tea’s brand values. If anything it’s a too safe a choice but if it raises money while also benefiting both brands positive values it’s hard to criticise it.

Powerade, iPods and running - a great lifestyle and brand partnership

When a synergistic brand partnership comes along that effectively taps into the lifestyle of its consumers it should be held up like an Olympic torch and applauded! So Powerade’s brand partnership with the Great Event Series, which includes the Great North Run, is logical as it attempts to differentiate itself from other energy drinks.However Powerade giving away 50,000 iPods to incentivise consumers to start running and listen to music at the same time to ease the pain is the icing on the cake.

Furthermore the winners of the iPods can download the bespoke training guide Powerade Pulse to ensure that they maintain motivation.  ‘Powerade Pulse’ is a bespoke ‘Powerade’ software programme that scans a customer’s digital music tracks and creates a play list at a designated Beats Per Minute (BPM) to match that person’s running ability. This appears to be similar to Nike’s iPod accessory Nike+iPod but it takes it onto the next level and creates a bespoke playlist rather than use an existing one.

Winning iPods will of course attract more consumer attention than Powerade’s partnership with the Great Event Series and probably cost them less.  However if that provides the spark for a consumer to then take up running and enter a half marathon and inspires them to get fit then that’s a great community benefit Powerade are providing. They should be applauded for this and gain some great positive association. Of course they’re not doing this for the community but to sell more Powerade but by inspiring people to run then the end result is the same.

A very cool brand partnership would be even better if they were also giving away places in the event series for races like the Great North Run but I am sure that will be coming, even if it would sell fewer bottles than winning iPods!

Free crap versus loyalty in the newspaper world

Newspapers have really stepped up their promotional schedule in the last few weeks. But is anything that they have given away worth having?
Last week the Mail on Sunday gave away DVD of a new unreleased film that probably would have done no business at the cinema. Therefore the distributors probably gambled that they would make more money from what the Mail paid them and the marketing they put behind it. Ultimately a crap film is still a crap film even when it is free! Did anyone watch it and if they did did they finish it?
The Times this week were giving away a real first, free REM iTunes tracks to help promote their new live album. The only problem with this is that half the tracks are some of their best music and any self respecting music fan would already have them. Who wants a live album anyway, they’re rarely as good as the original versions and REM have had better days.  Nice idea but where’s the value apart from for REM’s record company’s marketing department?
The Mail on Sunday have given away a best of Robbie Williams CD this week, again to support the release of his new album. But again if you wanted his best music wouldn’t you already have it by now?  So the Mail are happily being the main platform of the record company’s marketing campaign and 95% of the CD’s will never get played. How does the consumer benefit?
For all the instant sales that these promotions may gain the promiscuous readers that take these up will jump paper for the next freebie next week so where’s the marketing value?
The way forward for newspaper promotions and partnerships surely has to be The Times’ new loyalty scheme Times+. This imaginative scheme rewards loyal readers on a long term basis with exclusive content, offers, prizes and money can’t buy events like meeting The Times’ journalists. This is surely the way that all newspapers should be approaching promotions in the future, no free crap, no free marketing for fallen pop stars or terrible films but actually thinking about what a loyal reader wants and rewarding them.

Kit Kat’s free music downloads partnership encapsulates the perfect break perfectly

Kit Kat’s free music download with every pack promises much and overall it delivers. Nestle have formed an alliance with Universal to offer every customer a free download from 500,000 music tracks.  Although because there is no brand on the packs, no Play.com or itunes to reinforce a trust factor, customers might be cynical about which music tracks that they will actually receive. There does appear to be a great choice of old and new from major artists.

As the partnership is with only with one of the major music labels many people will be disappointed with the choice but overall they’re getting free music just from buying a Kit Kat to listen to in their perfect tea break so what have they go to lose! Music and Kit Kat’s are a fine partnership.

National Trust and Monopoly - a perfect brand partnership

The National Trust has pulled off a coup by being the first charity to create a brand partnership with Monopoly. Up until now any tom, dick or harry brand have created partnerships with Monopoly with regional themes, football clubs, cartoon characters you name it having their own Monopoly branded board.

The  National Trust will educate people about twenty six National Trust places from across the UK including beaches, a light house, a mill from the Industrial Revolution and Sir Winston Churchill’s family home and raise money from the sale proceeds.  Where there are houses and hotels in the original game, National Trust Monopoly has players building visitor centres and holiday cottages, a neat twist.

You may think that the ultimate capitalist game has little to do with an historical charity but they are all themed around property. A castle instead of Bond Street, a light house instead of MayFair. Ultimately a more interesting game that could lead to people becoming more enthused and inspired about the National Trust while still competing madly to win a classic board game.