Competitions are a great staple of traditional media and marketing (they are cheap & ‘free stuff’ is always a winner) now they are being used with some great success in the blogosphere:
A sponsored social networking campaign enlisting the help of six well-known bloggers is yielding big buzz for Kmart and encouraging consumers to give the retailer another look during the critical holiday season.
Kmart gave each of six influential bloggers a $500 gift certificate to go on a shopping spree in the store and then blog about their shopping experiences in any way they saw fit (no censorship). The bloggers clearly disclosed this sponsored arrangement in their respective postings.
In addition, Kmart is sponsoring a contest in which one community member from each of the six blogs will win a $500 gift certificate to go on a Kmart shopping spree.
It sounds corny and it sounds cheap, but it worked. The bloggers loved it (wow ‘free stuff’), their communities (think ‘audiences’) loved it and it worked a treat for Kmart:
“Kmart has clearly realized significant gains in share of social media voice through this campaign — in fact, it’s pulled ahead of JCPenney, and has made gains on Sears,” notes Vitrue CEO Reggie Bradford. “Kmart’s transparency in this effort was key, and a good example for any brand looking to use paid sponsorship elements to leverage social media’s power.”
Izea’s Murphy reports that, as of Dec. 5, the Kmart initiatives had resulted in more than 2,000 related comments across the six blogs, more than 2,500 contest entries via tweets, and collective reach across the blogs, Twitter etc. to approximately 500,000 people. “This has been huge,” he says.
Indeed, Sears Holdings has now decided to sponsor a similar blogger shopping spree/certificate contest for its Sears chain, to launch in mid December, according to Murphy.
Ah, greed, it’s always with us from Wall Street to Main Street to Cyber Street.
To paraphrase a former NSW Premier (Jack Lang): ‘a lot of things motivate people, but always put your money on self-interest because it’s always in there trying at the end of the race’.
