Monday, March 5, 2012 | Edited by Daniel Moores
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Volkswagen Uses Music to Promote New Beetle German Auto Import Uses Music to Promote Redesigned Beetle; Signs Title of Sea Otter Classic to Reach Cycling Enthusiasts With a portfolio largely comprised of pro sports teams and endurance events, Volkswagen of America, Inc. is setting its sights on another type of property: music. The German auto import this month will sponsor a performance exhibition by electronic music pioneers Kraftwerk at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and this summer will align with a handful of music festivals through an integrated partnership with Rolling Stone magazine. "Volkswagen has fantastic awareness, but we suffer from a lack of consideration. We're looking for new ways to bolster our consideration set," said Clark Campbell, Volkswagen's general manager, experiential marketing. VW is using the ties to promote the redesigned 2012 Beetle. The model represents the Beetle's second redesign in its more than 50-year history. The automaker will sponsor the April 10-17 Kraftwerk exhibition as part of its year-old MOMA partnership. VW signed a two-year partnership with the museum in 2011 to help expand its presence in the U.S. market. The performance exhibition -- dubbed Kraftwerk: Retrospective 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 -- will have eight shows, each of which will highlight one of the group's albums. "It's a phenomenal event that won't happen again anytime soon, and it aligns with our goal to be culturally relevant," said Campbell. In addition to the exhibition’s one-off nature, VW also was drawn to the band's German roots and use of the Beetle in songs and album artwork. The beginning of Kraftwerk's 1974 song Autobahn features the sound of a Beetle starting up, and the album cover features a Beetle on the autobahn. VW has longed used music as the cornerstone of its TV ads, added Campbell, pointing to Trio's Da Da Da in the late '90s and, more recently, Chamillionaire's Ridin Dirty and Ted Nugent's Stranglehold in ads for the VW Tiguan. VW is activating its Rolling Stone partnership with the co-branded Volkswagen Rock & Roll Fan Tailgate party, a music/lifestyle experiential program that features concerts and sports-related content. VW kicked off the program at the 2012 Super Bowl with performances by Jane's Addiction, The Roots and other acts. The automaker displayed two Beetles on the center stage of the Fan Tailgate Party, with each vehicle wrapped in the colors of the Super Bowl's two competing teams—the New England Patriots and New York Giants. The Tailgate Party also included a promotion that dangled an opportunity to attend the Super Bowl with retired quarterback Joe Montana. The Hall of Famer threw passes to eight fans in the Volkswagen end zone to celebrate the 30th anniversary of "The Catch," the winning touchdown reception during the 1982 NFC Championship Game between the NFL Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers. VW and Rolling Stone will take the Tailgate Party to a handful of music festivals this year. The iconic rock-and-roll magazine last year sponsored several music festivals including The Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn. VW's recent deal-making isn't limited to music events: The automaker has also inked new deals in the cycling space. Those include title of the April 19-22 Sea Otter Classic in Monterey, Calif. and co-sponsorship of Bike Belong, a national coalition of bicycle retailers and suppliers that promotes cycling. Cycling and other types of endurance events index high among VW owners, said Campbell, noting the company also sponsors the Zazzle Bay to Breakers cross-city race in San Francisco and the Bank of America Chicago Marathon, the latter of which VW has sponsored for the past 17 years. Other ties include Major League Soccer and the NHL New York Rangers. VW also sponsors a handful of properties located around its Herndon, Va. headquarters including the MLS D.C. United, NBA Washington Wizards, NHL Washington Capitals and WNBA Washington Mystics. VW also sponsors the Riverbend music festival in Chattanooga, Tenn., a market where it operates a manufacturing facility. (Source: IEG Sponsorship Report, 02/27/12) |
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A Splash of Romance in the Search for Paint Ace Hardware introduced an ad campaign last week for a new line of premium paints. Called Clark+Kensington, the line combines paint and primer, comes in 120 colors and can be custom-tinted to almost any color. Although Ace Hardware, a retailer-owned cooperative based in Oak Brook, Ill., began selling the new private-label line last September, it is advertising it only now. John Surane, Ace Hardware's senior vice president of merchandising, marketing, advertising and paint, said the cooperative wanted to reintroduce its paint department and increase awareness and consideration before the spring and summer painting seasons. To that end, the company ran a "Free Paint Saturday" this past Saturday, giving customers a free quart of the new paint in a color of their choice. According to Mr. Surane, Ace Hardware's paint sales represent less than 5 percent of all paint sales in the United States; he said the cooperative wanted to double its market share by 2015. In addition to the Clark+Kensington line, Ace Hardware stores also sell another private-label brand, Royal, and some of its stores sell Benjamin Moore paints. Another incentive for adding the new line, said Kent Furst, senior analyst for Freedonia Group, a research company in Cleveland, is that paint production "has a much higher profit margin than Ace's normal retail business." He said, "It makes sense that they would want to expand that." The company also has "excess paint manufacturing capacity with the recession, since the demand for paint in the United States has declined in the last couple of years," he added. The new campaign -- created by GSD&M, which is based in Austin, Tex. and has been Ace's agency since 2009 -- is a playful variation on Ace Hardware's longstanding tagline that calls its retailers "the helpful hardware store." Thus, a 30-second TV spot depicts a woman at the paint chip wall of an Ace store. She tells the salesman she is "looking for purple. But not like my favorite dress in college kind of purple." As she continues, the Ace salesman looks at eight men in a lineup, each in a different shade of purple from head to toe. As the woman says she is looking for a purple "kind of like it's raining, only it's raining way, way, way, way, way over there purple...know what I mean?" the salesman motions all but one of the men away. He says to the customer, "Yeah, you want the color, but you don't want to be smothered by it...something you can live with for a long time." The narrator then says, "Find your soul paint at Ace." A print ad shows a woman clutching a man, painted and dressed in burnt orange, on a motorcycle. The copy says: "She found her soul paint, Crouching Tiger 4022...you'll find a harmonious color palette...not to mention help from people who really know their stuff. All so you can finally find that perfect color you can live with for a long time." There is similar banner advertising, some of which promotes the paint giveaway. Television and online advertising began last Wednesday. The advertising is running on cable channels like HGTV and network programs like "CSI," "Shark Tank" and "Dateline," as well as on Web sites like RealSimple.com, MSN.com and HomeAway.com. Online ads will run through August, while the TV spot will run through the fall. Print ads will run in March through May issues of magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and InStyle. All ads refer viewers to Ace Hardware's Facebook page for more than 30 humorous videos of interviews with people who personify the new Clark+Kensington shades. According to Dana Larsen, a brand manager for Ace Hardware, the new advertising, which is "all about romance," is meant to appeal to women 25 to 44, "who are the primary drivers in the selection of color." "Women make the color decision. They're the ones who struggle with it; they want to not have to make it again for a long time," she added. Duff Stewart, president and chief executive of GSD&M, which is part of the Omnicom Group, said big retailers like Home Depot and Lowe's "operate with lots of choices, and consumers are left to their own devices, there's no one there to help." But at neighborhood Ace stores, he said, "the owner-associate has a much more personal relationship with consumers. They help consumers choose what's right for them through guidance and validation. By having someone help in the process, they give great paint." Founded in 1934, Ace Hardware now has 4,500 stores worldwide, 4,100 of them in the United States. Mr. Surane said Ace Hardware's paint advertising expenditures will increase 20 percent in 2012 versus 2011. According to Kantar Media, the company spent $49.2 million on all advertising in 2010, including $41.3 million from January through September; it said expenditures were $34.6 million in the same period of 2011. Jack Horst, a retail strategist at Kurt Salmon Associates, called the paint category "the only one I can think of in the hardware business that creates an emotional attachment between the customer and the retailer." He said, "With most hardware items, who cares? But paint is a really personal, emotional thing." The new campaign, he added, "is a real clever way of attracting people to the store in a category that has the possibility of driving much deeper and emotional attachment to the rest of Ace." Barbara E. Kahn, a professor of marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, praised the campaign's push to simplify the paint choice process. "Choosing from a large assortment of options can be difficult," she said, "and even more difficult if there are many items within the assortment that are very similar to each other. Anything that can make the decision process more inviting and less intimidating is bound to help." Although paint sales might be suffering because of the soft real estate market, she said they could be helped by the "lipstick or nail polish effect: if I can't afford to move, I can afford to paint a room." (Source: The New York Times, 03/01/12) How You Can Make Money: It may come as something of a surprise, but Ace has a terrific co-op program; and paint is one of the richest co-op categories in existence. Of course, you know there has to be a catch: Ace is one of the trickiest co-op programs for an account executive to access. The company is hyper-vigilant about not receiving inquiries from station sales representatives directly. So, develop a relationship with your Ace store managers. They will have to pursue the co-op dollar availability for their store directly from the Ace corporate office or via their Regional or District Managers. And don't stress too terribly if you can't get to the information in time for this particular promotional push; Autumn is the next prime season for paint. |
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What Stations Are Doing: Univision Partnership Creates Branded Newsstands and Airport Cafes Media companies have extended their brands to brick and mortar stores and restaurants for decades -- from ESPN Zone restaurants to CNBC newsstands. Univision is the latest, inking a deal that will put it in some of America's busiest airports. The Hispanic-targeted broadcaster has signed a licensing agreement with The Paradies Shops, which operates retail and food stores in 70 airports nationwide, including such busy hub cities as Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Phoenix and San Francisco. Together they'll develop Univision newsstands and Univision Deportes-branded sports cafés. "Over nearly five decades, Univision has built a strong brand affinity with Hispanic consumers and we are always looking for ways to strengthen our relationship and directly serve our consumers," Univision Enterprises SVP Rick Alessandri says. The Paradies Shops is the same company behind the CNBC-branded newsstands in airports and a "Sports Radio 66" WFAN, New York-branded store in JetBlue's Terminal 5 at New York's JFK airport. CEO Gregg Paradies says the move is in part driven by demographics. He says the Univision deal is a "natural fit to offer travelers real-time access to culturally relevant premium Spanish content, cuisine and merchandise." The companies haven't announced when or where the first Univision-branded shops will open. (Source: Inside Radio, 02/28/12) |
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