Picture it: you’re the Vice President of Marketing and you learn that not only was your brand’s logo prominently featured in a commercial, it was done so without your permission. What do you do?
- Nothing.
- Issue a Cease and Desist letter.
- Embrace the opportunity.
That’s exactly what happened to John Lamb when an employee brought it to his attention that one of Elo’s monitors was featured in the now widely popular “Ultrasound” commercial, created for the Dorito’s Crash the Super Bowl contest. If you’re unfamiliar with the contest, it crowdsources ad content by allowing regular, everyday people to create commercials for Doritos. The general public then votes for their favorite commercial and the lucky finalists are given the opportunity for their ad to appear during the Super Bowl – and a chance to win a grand prize of $1 million.
After reviewing the ad, Lamb and his team decided that it was not threatening to the brand and, in fact, it was actually pretty funny. They made the decision not only to embrace the opportunity, but to build a zero-budget marketing campaign around it as well. After all, how often does free, viral marketing fall into your lap?
No stranger to innovation, Elo pioneered touchscreen technology more than 40 years ago and today the company is a global supplier of touchscreen products, including monitors and computers. Their technology is used virtually everywhere, from monitors in hospitals and government agencies to payment systems and large interactive displays in some of the world’s favorite retail stores. Despite being a leader in their field, “Elo” isn’t exactly a household name, however.
“When you’re a brand that sort of sits in the background, it’s exciting to see your logo prominently displayed” says Lamb.
We agree. While much of the post-game chatter has focused on commercial ‘tops and flops,” we thought it would be great to take a peek into the three ways the unsung marketing heroes at Elo maximized this opportunity to increase their brand awareness.
How the Zero-Budget Marketing Campaign Worked
1.) Word of Mouth
Despite increased attention on digital marketing and advertising, plain old word of mouth is still an effective way to get the word out about your brand. Elo initially shared the news of their inclusion in the ad verbally with their internal stakeholders, employees and also resellers with whom they might have come into contact.
This, undoubtedly, led to others sharing the news as well.
2.) Newsletter
Still a popular and cost-effective means of communication, email marketing continues to be one of the best ways for brands to quickly share information with a large audience. Elo followed their word of mouth campaign up with three separate, personalized, newsletters to their employees, partners, resellers and customers. The three-sentence newsletter was succinct, sharing only that one of their monitors was featured in this cool ad and providing a link to check it out and vote for it to win.
One thing we loved was that there was no call-to-action encouraging people to make a purchase or schedule a demo. They simply shared information and invited recipients to join them on the journey of enjoying a funny moment.
3.) Social Media
Finally, like any good brand, Elo decided to take to the web with their news. Not only were they able to share the information with their followers on LinkedIn and Twitter, Elo’s partners and resellers also joined in the action by sharing the information across their digital channels as well.
This is a great example of how a brand took one piece of content and utilized it across several channels to essential create a zero-budget marketing campaign. Over the next three weeks, we will break down digital marketing through many different channels and help you identify ways that you can use content to bring brand awareness to your organization as well.