As 2014 wraps up, we thought we would look back and see what our most popular blogs of the year were. Here is the list of the Top 10 blogs published in 2014 ranked by the number of times they were visited this year. 1. 5 Social Valentine’s Day Sweepstakes Ideas Love is in […]
Five years ago American Express started promoting a new concept: Small Business Saturday. The idea is simple: consumers are asked to spend their holiday shopping dollars locally at small businesses, and American Express provides incentives to those shoppers. In just those five years, the concept of shopping locally the day after Black Friday has […]
With Black Friday and Cyber Monday fast approaching, what can you do to ensure your brand’s holiday promotion gets off to a great start? There is a lot at stake here — last year’s Cyber Monday sales topped $2.29 billion. Here are three simple things to do to ensure that your holiday promotion goes […]
Don’t want to get lost in the sea of promotions running during the holidays from October through December? Consider running a promotion in conjunction with a more obscure, non-traditional holiday. Here are some of our favorite holidays that are ripe for a sweeps or contest tie-in. Betty White’s Birthday: January 17 Betty White, everyone’s […]
What do Target, Maserati, and SodaStream have in common? They all had web sites go down due to heavy traffic during a promotion. We frequently see companies like this spend thousands on advertisement development and placement, only to have the campaign go bad because someone forgot to plan for web site traffic surges. Don’t […]
Maryann Murphy, former Account Executive for Marden-Kane, wrote this timely post on Halloween contest ideas. It’s not too late to run a promotion for this year! Contact us and we can get you launched before Halloween! Saying goodbye to summer (and beach weather) can be difficult, but fall has officially arrived and you know […]
There is no short answer on how to get your customers to create a lot of quality user generated content (UGC). But what we see over and over again in our client promotions is that if the bar is set too high, you may only get a few entries. Set it too low, you may […]
We have seen many a contest go awry because the sponsor did not put a few safeguard in the official rules to protect themselves. Here is our short list of restrictions you should have in place: Don’t allow copyrighted materials. That means no music, copy or images of anything that isn’t original. And sometimes […]
The beauty of the ice bucket challenge is that it was not conceived in a conference room by high paid creatives trying to think of what the next big viral thing would be. The ice bucket challenge started with a few people dumping water over their heads for charity and challenging others to do […]
If you think that sweepstakes laws can be confusing and expensive to adhere to in the US, wait till you check out these unique international sweepstakes & contest laws in other countries. Canada: When running a promotion in Quebec all materials must be available in English AND French. This includes rules, promotional ads, posters, […]