It has been an interesting shift that’s left travel and hospitality companies like Mancation Nation and The Abbey Resort reexamining and reconfiguring their vacation packages to include more than girls weekend specials.

I know I can’t wait ‘til my next Mancation. I’m thinking, a group outing of swimming with sharks and then maybe run a 5K in the mountains. Who’s coming with me?

Grill maker Char-Broil this summer is activating a 33-week mobile grilling tour to promote its Char-Broil Infrared grills. A crew of three accompanies Char-Broil’s 50-foot trailer as it travels to BBQ festivals, NASCAR races, “Taste of”‘ festivals and NFL football games to connect with consumers and educate them about infrared grilling. The bonus: free food hot off the grill.

While this is Char-Broil’s ninth year on the road with a mobile tour, this summer’s effort has grown in geographical coverage and includes sponsors Miller Lite, Dole, Bubba Burgers and Johnsonville, which provide food and beverages for sampling. AmeriGas, also a sponsor, provides fuel for the grills.

Char-Broil’s trailer is equipped with a full kitchen and a pull-down stage with a six-foot prize wheel that attendees can spin for giveaways such as t-shirts and other freebies as they taste one-ounce sample of burgers, chicken, pork and grilled fruit from the tour sponsors. They can play backyard games such as bean bag tossing and a “Grill to Go” race in which players have to collapse a grill run it around a cone and set it up again. Attendees can register to win a Char-Broil Big Easy oil-less turkey fryer given away at each stop on the tour and opt-in to receive emails from Char-Broil. A tour website and Facebook page round out the experience.

“Consumers want to hang out around our trailer, and then we start delivering our messaging about what Char-Broil is and what our infrared grills do as we cook live and give out samples,” Michelle Zeller, vp-marketing at Char-Broil, told Buzz. “The biggest benefit of infrared cooking is that the food comes out juicy. It is hard to describe, but if you taste it, you understand it. We want to educate people and show them, not just tell them about infrared cooking and build Char-Broil awareness.” Agency: Marketing Werks, Chicago

From Event Marketer

With the internet and other services, we’re well prepared to compare products side-by-side to ensure the best price. And to our benefit, more and more companies are offering cash-back incentives to weather the storm.  So Brands - keep in mind not only can you reach me online and at retail, but on the street, as well. Either way, cash [back] is king.

Love,

Me

This power-shift has changed the way the healthcare industry markets its products and services. The United States spends more money on healthcare than any other industrialized nation in the world, at about $7,129 per capita. That’s a lot of money dedicated towards its people. Yet, those people often feel underpowered and underserved. To the consumer, it’s all about being in control and having the upper hand. No longer do consumers have to settle on one partner in healthcare services. Treat your consumers with respect, because they are looking for a partner who is looking out for them.

Take a look at what Walgreen’s has done with the “Walgreen’s Wellness Tour.” They have ten buses travelling all across the nation providing free heath screenings ranging from BMI to bone density. Each screening given on the bus comes in at an estimated value of $140. Talk about giving back to the consumer! What a great way to give back to the community and give the consumer a sense of choice and a trusted partner.

After all is said and done with the United States new healthcare reform, where will your brand be in the mind of the consumer? Will you be their partner of choice?

As we all know, it takes a team effort to put together a top-notch consumer experience in the mobile marketing industry. And the foundation of this effort comes in the form of multi-faceted collaboration.

Here at MW, collaboration is at the heart of our operations. We lean on others and take the weight of others leaning on us. It’s what makes our world turn. And it produces award-winning experiential marketing campaigns. We pride ourselves on our abilities to over-communicate and over-deliver when it comes to our client service.

Collaboration is not only the ability to “play nice in the sandbox” with others; it’s also the ability to ask the right questions and have the answers prepared for questions that have yet to be asked. It’s the essence of client service.

As I said, here at MW our collaborative efforts wear multiple hats. On some campaigns, we collaborate with fellow agencies to deliver the best experience to our consumers. On others, we move forward with our clients actively involved in all aspects of the program, including event site execution.

And collaboration with partners not only lies in an agency’s abilities on the event sites created, but also within the extensive planning and strategizing that leads up to those on-site operations. Event site build consultations and staff recruiting/training are some of the first steps to be taken when creating a mobile campaign. And they prove to be the most important when measuring a consumer’s experience on-site.

Ultimately, an agency should strive to create a campaign that builds brand equity and brand awareness in a world where market saturation no longer means putting all of your marketing/advertising/promotion dollars into television commercials where ROI is becoming scarce and hard to justify. That campaign has shifted into creating a personal experience that is created through the collaborative efforts of many to affect the most targeted and demanding of consumers.

Whether they’re texting, calling, surfing the web or tweeting, young teenage girls are “attached” to their mobile phones. From Blackberry and Verizon to the Apple iPhone 3Gs, the amount of time and money this target spends is almost unheard of. Come to think of it, it seems as if most everyone is spending time on his or her phones; from the youth market to even seeing an increase in cell phone use of the mature generation.

Mobile marketing has been coined as “the next big thing” for quite some time. Year after year, we have seen a steady rise in SMS and MMS messaging to consumers. According to a recent survey, 40% of brands are using these types of ad campaigns.It has been projected that companies will be spending over $16 billion by 2011. That’s right around the corner folks!

Retailers are getting smarter. This proximity marketing works. Think of this group of girls on their mobile phone walking around the mall and they get a text message reading, “get 10% off at the Gap today!” right as they were walking in the mall wing where the Gap was located. Don’t you think this would encourage the group to walk into Gap and maybe even purchase something from the store? I think so.

So, next time you’re walking down the street, in the mall, down Rodeo Drive, remember that your next text message may not be from your best friend; it just might be from that retail store down the street saying hello. Don’t worry about finding the store, cause they’ll find you.

The new office is strategically located in Jersey City, New Jersey, and will be headquarters for 20 Marketing Werks employees who serve the agency’s east coast clients. Additionally the centralized office will serve as an operations center for other Marketing Werks teams when their respective campaigns are active in the region.

“We are thrilled to establish this office because the east coast is a very important region for Marketing Werks. Focusing our primary client service staff into one central office will provide us the vantage point to continue to deliver unparalleled service to our clients based in the area,” said Marketing Werks’ Co-Managing Partner, Julie Guida.

“The office also will provide an operational advantage since Marketing Werks is physically executing experiential campaigns somewhere in the region nearly every day. These consumer markets are important targets for the majority of brands we represent. In fact, we currently have ten teams on the ground in New York every day,” added Scott Moller, Marketing Werks’ Co-Managing Partner.

The Marketing Werks executive management team based at the new office includes Client Service Directors Julie Schweigert and Brian Neville, and Senior Account Manager Matt Cicero. The office is located at 30 Montgomery Street, Suite 1210, Jersey City, NJ, 07302. Its main phone number is 201-604-6060. For additional information about Marketing Werks, visit www.marketingwerks.com.
Headquartered in Chicago, Marketing Werks develops and executes integrated, strategy-driven campaigns for leading consumer brands, including Verizon Wireless, Verizon Telecom, The Hershey Company, Sony PlayStation, Walgreens, Gore-Tex, The National Pork Board and LaCosteña. Founded in 1987, Marketing Werks has been distinguished as one of Chicago’s fastest growing independent companies for three consecutive years - a designation awarded by Crain’s Chicago Business. Also Marketing Werks has been named one of Chicago’s Top 10 Generation Y employers because of its best practices for aspiring professionals 28 years old and younger.

Remember that Popsicle commercial from the 90’s, that kid with the goofy, colorful hair and his dog Duke? He was simply amazed at the limitless amount of possibilities that went into this amazing newly designed popsicle. I guess the reason I always liked this commercial was because I always wanted a high top fade haircut to be layered in multiple colors and flavors too. But when you stop and realize, consumers are really just looking for and craving that sort of brand experience and interaction.

Simply stop and take a second to think about all the things a person does throughout their day. Wake up, shower, walk to work, maybe drive, or take the train, grab a cup of coffee, go out for lunch, the list goes on and on and differs from person to person. Sometimes it’s the same routine day in and day out. Experiential marketing campaigns have been creating lasting experiences with top, household name brands where your next walk to work can turn into a whole new lasting experience in just a second. We know you may hate your every day lifestyle, but we’re here to make your day just a little better with a big colorful kick.

So just as the kid from the commercial gets his own brand experience with a popsicle by growing crazy colorful hair upon his first lick, we too can turn your brand into the experience of a lifetime. Don’t be colorblind; the possibilities are endless.

I love Super Bowl commercials. The funnier and smarter they are the better. Some of my favorites include Fed-Ex’s Caveman; Monster.com’s When I Grow Up; Apple’s, 1984; and my all-time favorite, Reebok’s Terry Tate, Office Linebacker. What makes all of these commercials standout in my memory is that they did their job — they literally broke through the commercial clutter, caught my attention, held it, entertained me and successfully delivered a brand message.

In age of fragmented television viewership and social media, marketers will need to find new ways to engage consumers with their respective brands. This is one of the primary reasons why Frito-Lay has elected to move beyond traditional Super Bowl marketing, i.e., purchase airtime and have an advertising agency produce a funny TV spot. Instead the Doritos brand team has literally said to consumers, “You create an ad. We won’t edit it. And we’ll let you pick the winner, which we’ll put on the largest advertising stage possible.”

This is a brilliant approach to building a brand. Frito-Lay has learned that marketing is a not support function, rather, marketing is a tool for sustaining growth for a business. By leveraging two marketing strategies, advertising (traditional) and social media/user-generated content (emerging) the Doritos brand team has created an equity building campaign that allows them to remain in “conversation” with their target audience throughout the year.