There have been two very successful auction based reward programs in the F.M.C.G. sector, the first I believe was Coke Auction, the second was Cadbury's Creme Egg Auction created by Geoff Howe.
The principle behind it was simple buy and enjoy Cadbury Creme Eggs, keep the wrappers and use them to bid to win on some amazing prizes.
All in all it was going to be a massive promotion (With £3m worth of ad spend - According to Campaign) and I wanted to get the lion's share of that exposure for some of my clients.
Luckily I knew a few people at Geoff Howe so I called them up and asked them what they were looking for in terms of prizes - the widest and whackiest was their answer. As you can just about make out from the final POS below, I managed to get three of my clients - Cathay Pacific Airways and Sea France as two of the biggest reward partners on the program - but it wasn't easy!
When you are trying to pitch ideas to secure millions of pounds of exposure for your clients on a major brand's key national promotion you have to really adapt what you can do in order to be as relevant as possible to their objectives - this takes a lot of time and especially trust from your clients to make these things happen.
Sea France
Sea France was a cross channel ferry company that simply transported passengers and their cars from Dover to Calais - what could they possibly offer Cadbury's that was wild and whacky!
We created the prize of a "Calais Rallye" offering the chance for 6 people and their partner to take part in a Calais Rallye. The winning couples would be met at Dover, where they would collect their Calais Rallye cars and board the ferry for Calais. After a lunch and the pre-rally briefing, they would then go through all of the Rallye Stages specially developed across Calais (designed as a scenic event rather than a time trial) before driving to a nearby by Chateau where they would be wined and dined. The following morning, the contestants would then take part in an egg hunt within the grounds of the Chateau, the winner receiving a weeks holiday in France courtesy of Sea France.
In order to make this happen Sea France had to have meetings with the Mayor of Calais and get permissions for the event whilst I put in a call to Smart to see if they would loan us 6 smart cars for the event. They thought we were bonkers, but when we explained the promotion and explained it was a scenic Calais Rallye and not time based event - they sent a car transporter with six cars to Dover and unloaded and prepared them for our winners.
Cathay Pacific Airways
Luckily the people at Geoff Howe and Cadbury's didn't have to make us work so hard for our pitch. We just simply offered to take a number of winning auction prize winners to Hong Kong for the week and carry out an "Egg Hunt in Hong Kong" from memory I think the winning egg hunt couple received a free round the world flight with Cathay Pacific.
So that's how I secured somewhere in the region of £3m of exposure for two of my clients in a creative and whacky manner. But none of this would have been possible without the trust and hard work of my partners in crime Rachel Rissbrook (Sea France) and Paul Cruttenden (Cathay Pacific Airways). And of course the team at Geoff Howe.
The promotion was an enormous success, with plenty of stories in the press about people buying and eating 3,000 eggs to win some of the flagship prizes and of course enjoying their experiences.
I once asked Geoff Howe (owner of Geoff Howe) how they managed to count all of the wrappers from all of the entries as it must have been a massive task. He smiled, and said they didn't. Because participants bid on specific lots and had to put the their wrappers into an envelope and send them in with the total number of wrappers written on the envelope, they only had to check and count the winning bid for each auction to ensure they had in fact submitted the correct number of wrappers for the winning bid!
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