How to plan a brand activation – 7 prize promotions ideas
It’s no secret that the key to a successful brand activation campaign is creating a shareable experience. The dream scenario? Customers share their experience with all their mates, colleagues, family and followers, spreading your brand far and wide.
But how do you create that kind of shareable experience? No doubt you expect me to say this, but a prize promotion delivers exactly the kind of experience that people want to share. What’s more, when people do share a promotion with those who are close to them, there is a kind of snowball effect.
But don’t just take my word for it. Prizeology commissioned some independent research into attitudes towards prize promotions, which found that 35% of people are more likely to enter a prize promotion if it’s shared by a family member and 31% are more likely to enter if a friend alerts them to the opportunity.
Brand activation ideas
So, what kind of prize promotions can you run for your brand activation campaign? Here’s a rundown of my favourite mechanisms.
- Text-to-win prize draws
Text-to-win prize promotions are easy to enter. All the customer has to do to enter the prize draw is text a short code to a specially set up short number. There are no long forms to fill in, they usually find out whether they’ve won immediately – it’s as simple as that.
Weetabix ran a successful text-to-win promotion, with the aim of increasing sales across a variety of products. To enter, eligible retailers (typically convenience store managers) purchased specified quantities of Weetabix products and sent their invoice details via text, entering the prize draw at the same time.
And they’re not the only ones… Gillette, Sony, Nivea and McDonald’s are just a few brands making use of text-to-wins for engagement. In fact, considering how prevalent SMS marketing is, it’s no surprise that the major global brands utilise this channel for brand activations.
And now at Prizeology, we can use the same technology to run a What’s-App-to Win prize draw, too!
- Incentivised app downloads
Do you have a new app and you want to secure downloads? Perhaps you’ve just launched, and you need to get everyone engaging with your brand?
The App Store is a competitive place, so a download incentive can help to cut through the noise. Free entry into a prize draw or a limited number of freebies for the first downloaders are both popular motivators.
The most effective brand prize promotions provide incentives that align with their audience’s wants and needs. To encourage consumers to download the Samsung Members App, Samsung ran a special promotion offering a free 64Gb micro SD memory card.
- Celeb-led prize promotions
Celeb-led prize promotions provide a double dose of engagement for a brand. Not only are you encouraging brand engagement with a brilliant prize, but you’ve got the celebrity’s platform to promote it on too. Win-win!
Yoghurt brand Oykos partnered with Peter Andre. As part of its Thrive On campaign, fronted by actor Idris Elba, Purdey’s ran a competition which associated their multivitamin drink with a growth mindset. Clear criteria and a strategic approach meant the competition received thousands of high-quality entries.
- Scratch cards
Scratch cards are one of the oldest mechanics used for prize promotions and they’re still going strong. Why are they still so popular? Well, they can be physical or virtual; scratching to reveal a prize creates excitement for the customer and winner gratification is immediate.
Spar ran an in-store scratch card promotion for a chance to win one of thousands of prizes, with no purchase necessary. The promotion hit the client’s increased in-store footfall target and customer
- Cash giveaways
Who doesn’t want to win cold, hard cash? This type of prize allows for a range of volumes and values, and promotions offering money always work well for brand activations.
In the Kingsmill magic moments cash prize draw, customers simply had to collect a code from the ‘best before’ tag on their loaf of bread and enter it online to find out if they’d won instantly. Cash prizes ranged from £10 to one major prize of £10,000- and included a special grand prize draw at the end. The promotion ensured the brand achieved stand out on the shelf and a deepened customer engagement.
- On-pack promotions
On-pack promotions provide you with the opportunity to take customers from the store and move them to the screen. The digital environment offers an unrivalled space in which your brand can interact with your customers and driving your customers online means even deeper brand engagement.
In Haribo’s largest ever on-pack promotion, every hour for six months, customers could win prizes by inputting a unique code printed on packets of sweets. There were 4,200 prizes available in total. Haribo wanted a ‘playful’ promotion for its 25th birthday that was in line with their brand values and this was enthusiastically embraced by consumers.
- User-generated content
Through prize competitions, you can encourage your customers to generate original content for you. Not only does this create amazing assets that you can utilise in a variety of ways, but this level of interaction and brand engagement is unbeatable.
This Absolut creative competition was a global promotion, challenging amateur artists around the world to create an original work of art inside the iconic Absolut bottle shape (and it was a challenging promotion in terms of ensuring compliance in a range of different territories, too!). There were 9,000 international entries.
Here at Prizeology we handle all aspects of prize promotions, including supporting planned activity around brand activations or experiential marketing campaigns. Just give us a call on 020 7856 0402 or drop us a line on hello@prizeology.com.
