Consumer Products

Marketing - Event Sponsorship

Situation

Greased Lightning® cleaning products, a division of BioLab, Inc., sponsors the Country Music Association's Music Festival/Fan Fair®. The four-day event each June in Nashville draws more than 135,000 fans. Greased Lightning has the naming rights to the daytime stages on Nashville's riverfront and has two exhibit hall booths.

Challenge

Historically, the company did little to support its sponsorship aside from distributing trial sized samples to event attendees. This practice proved to be extremely cost prohibitive and ROI was low, as Greased Lightning did not make efforts to capture demographic or contact information of attendees for use in future marketing efforts.

c21 Solution

c21 worked directly with the sponsorship/promotion managers at CMA to determine the most popular activities, and developed other innovative ideas for Greased Lightning. BioLab approved several c21 ideas for implementation:

• Vespa Contest - c21 developed a contest through which festival attendees could enter to win a trendy Vespa scooter in Greased Lightning's signature black and yellow brand colors. The contest attracted attendees to the Greased Lightning booths during the event - and to its Web site afterwards, as well as helped Greased Lightning build its consumer database for marketing purposes.
• Company Spokespeople - c21 recommended Greased Lightning incorporate spokesmodels at their booths to reach different audience segments. The spokesmodels handed out product coupons - instead of expensive samples - and encouraged people to enter the Vespa contest.
• Country Artists - c21 contacted the CMA event organizers to request that artists performing on the Greased Lightning Daytime Stages follow their performances with an appearance at the Greased Lightning booths to sign autographs and mingle with fans. Ten artists granted the request at no additional cost.
• Additionally, c21 developed a 5x7 branded postcard featuring spokesmodels on the front and the Greased Lightning household product line and Web site on the back. c21 also arranged for Greased Lightning's TV commercials to be shown on the giant screens at the Greased Lightning Daytime Stages, on televisions and information terminals placed throughout the Fan Fair Exhibit Hall.

Results

The Vespa contest garnered 4,000 entries, all of which included e-mail addresses. Half of the entries were completed online post-event, driving added traffic to the Greased Lightning Web site. Nearly 5,000 attendees visited the Greased Lightning booth, and more than 2,000 product cards and 5,000 coupons were given away to attendees. In addition to being cost effective, the coupons also helped increase Greased Lightning's product sales following Fan Fair. More than 100,000 people attended concerts at the Greased Lightning-sponsored daytime stages, and the commercials were shown multiple times each day, helping to enhance the company's investment and visibility at the event.