Blue Ribbon Hall of Fame campaign sets promotions records

click to enlarge

The national promotional campaign, devised by its marketing company, The Idea Worx, focussed on boosting pride in South Africa's soccer heroes launched on 1 August as a six-month campaign. In just under two months, Blue Ribbon has received 900 000 SMS entries and all indications are that this trend will continue, reportedly a record for a bread industry promotion.

In addition to boosting sales, the campaign is aimed at engendering pride in South Africa's soccer heritage by featuring past and current soccer legends in a proudly South Africa card trading game.

Breaking records

Following a similar and highly successful "Smurf" sticker campaign in 2011, Premier Foods briefed The Idea Worx to conceptualise and execute another interactive promotional campaign for its flagship bread brand. The Smurf campaign notched up a million SMS entries over six months. The Hall of Fame campaign, conceived and developed by Idea Worx directors Colin Hutt, Lee Wainman and Craig Mathieson is on track to triple this figure.

In addition to the record SMS entries, the campaign is setting records for producing millions of stickers (the most in any promotional campaign in SA) and other printed material during the six-month period.

Hutt says the mass interest in the promotion has surpassed expectations. "It's always our intention to conceptualise really great promotions for the public and in so doing surpass our clients' expectations and we believe we're on track to achieve this." He says that with a weekly circulation of over 330 000, as well as an excellent reputation with soccer fans, Soccer-Laduma was the obvious media partner.

Soccer cards offer prizes

Every week, Soccer-Laduma offers readers nine unique perforated, collectable soccer cards with player biographies - including legendary stars that did South Africa proud under adverse conditions in the apartheid era. Stickers inside the bread bags provide an image of the player to complete the card. The full collector's pack consists of 66 individual soccer players while duplicate stickers can be applied to Hall of Fame posters found in Soccer-Laduma.

Each collectable sticker carries a unique number that, when SMS to 33087 offers a chance to win weekly prizes such as limited autographed posters, Adidas soccer kits and Foosball tables. The overall winner and 10 friends will be offered a chance to meet and spend time with two soccer legends, Benni McCarthy and Reneilwe "Yeye" Letsholonyane.

For more, go to www.premierfoods.com or to the Facebook page.