Previous Experience

Much like toys, Q4 is THE critical sales period for the battery category. To help Duracell own share of voice and drive sales, we brokered a multi-layered deal with the brand and Ellen DeGeneres, that included spokesperson services as well as 4 integrations on her popular show between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

This program kicked off the week before Thanksgiving. We brought together Ellen and the Marines, to announce a partnership with Toys for Tots. Every special package of Duracell batteries triggered a donation to this charity.

To ensure the proper branding in all event photos, we wrapped a C-130 cargo jet like the iconic copper and black Duracell battery.

The 4 show integrations each had a retail partner, which helped Duracell secure favorable shelf space at their top customers.

The program started with a bang and had a long tail through the holiday season. It allowed Duracell to dominate competition in share of voice and win the season from a sales perspective.

Imagine a world of wireless charging – where you can just drop and charge your phone at will. That day is surely coming, but Duracell Powermat was a pioneer in the space.

The product line was introduced at the most cluttered and busy trade shows, the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas (CES). We knew we needed something powerful to break through.

After an exhaustive search to identify the person most associated with “power” we landed on Jay-Z and negotiated a deal where he was not only the voice and face of the brand, he also became a part owner.

This announcement, along with other secondary partnerships like Madison Square Garden were made at CES. Through a sophisticated media strategy of exclusives and influencer engagements, we kicked off a media cascade that delivered more than 100 million media impressions, making the announcement one of the biggest at the show.

Sometimes you don’t need to create new ideas, especially if you can identify those ideas that have worked elsewhere that might also work here. Such was the case with Pampers/UNICEF. This highly successful program had been running in Europe for years when the US marketing team decided to import it.

The agency teams identified potential barriers; most notably that UNICEF was not as well known here and Americans have a preference for charities that focus here at home. Also, CSR programs were becoming common place and we needed something (or someone) big to break through.

We ran a highly analytical search using e-scores to identify famous moms who also had characteristics that would lend an authentic voice to the program. This was critical because in order for the initiative to work, moms had to care. From a large list of contenders, Salma Hayek rose to the top.

We negotiated a deal that included spokesperson work as well as a TV commercial voice-over.

Once we secured Oprah Winfrey’s top rated show to launch the program, we moved our press event to Chicago and used that as a platform to reach national and local press as well as top mommy bloggers. This delivered hundreds of individual pieces of media coverage and hundreds of millions of media impressions.

 

“Buy a pack. No, buy several packs.” - Oprah Winfrey

In 2001, Hasbro decided to relaunch Trivial Pursuit with an offering that was designed to overcome a major barrier to trial: questions that were simply too hard to answer. This edition would have a strong focus on pop culture and would only include questions that relate to the 20 year period since the game originally launched.

We started the year with a bang at Toy Fair, announcing a contest where anyone could win the opportunity to be immortalized as a question in the game. This quirky contest, with a prize you simply couldn’t buy, drew massive media coverage.

Over the summer as the game was getting ready to launch, we sent copies to many of the notable people who were questions in the game. That started another cascade of media coverage as these influencers boasted about their newest claim to fame.

But the time period that matters most in the toy and game world is November and December, when people are out shopping for holiday gifts. And in 2001, that meant we had to create awareness at a time when people were still in a state of shock and media outlets were still focused on the unspeakable tragedy of 9/11.

As New Yorkers, we were especially sensitive to the challenge at hand, but we also took heed of our Mayor’s call to try and get back to normalcy.

So we called him and asked if he would consider helping us launch the game at Toys R Us Times Square, with the Village People, Mia Hamm and the pets.com sock puppet – all of whom were questions in the game. He said yes!

Not only did this draw hundreds of millions of media impressions, the eclectic group, scripted by an SNL writer, provide a few moments of levity in what was otherwise a very dark time.

And the 20th Anniversary Edition of Trivial Pursuit went on to be one of the best selling games of the holiday season.