Over the water cooler, a co-worker mentioned an interesting competition that she had heard about.  The award: one million dollars. It peaked my interest as I immediately saw an opportunity to apply my professional experience to the situation.

The contest was being held by All American Pet Brands. Jumping on the bandwagon of so many now popular reality TV shows where the viewers vote for their “favorite [INSERT ANY TOPIC YOU CAN THINK OF HERE]”, they were holding an online competition that would determine America’s favorite dog.  People could enter their pup into 12 weekly competitions.  Each week the public could vote for the dog that they liked best.  The winner of each of the 12 weeks would then be entered into a final round of competition where they would go head to head (or tail to tail in this case) for the chance to win $1 million.

Well, I have a dog.  He’s darn cute.  Moreover, I’m a marketer.  And, I’d like to think, a smart one at that.

How hard could it be to get my pup more votes than Tuffy or Miss Ellie?  If I can increase my clients’ business 250% in five short months, I can surely get my dog, Romo, a few thousand votes.  So I approached this marketing challenge as I would any of my other accounts. Below is the resulting case study:

Challenge:

Motivate an audience that is bombarded with action requests (“accept my friend request”, “add me on LinkedIn”, “become a fan”, “comment on my blog”, “follow my tweets”….) to take a series of steps to vote for Romo

Objective:

Generate votes for Romo.

Target Audience:

General Public, No HHI requirements

Budget:

$0.00

Strategy:

Phase I

Maximize existing social networks and contacts.

-       Social Media

• “Vote” solicitations were posted on social networking sites where over 750 friends were reminded repeatedly to vote for Romo daily.
• Friends were encouraged to post the same solicitations on their own pages, expanding the universe of social networking voters to well over 10,000

-       E-blasts

• E-blasts were sent to various audiences within my personal network; the messaging was tailored to each audience to best encourage action

Phase II

Find creative ways to extend reach. (Again, $0 budget)

-        Radio

• Called a local popular morning radio station and offered them $100,000 cut of the $1million prize should they support Romo. Received  over 15 minutes of air time publicity during a key morning drive hour

-       Web

• A link to vote for Romo was posted on the radio station’s website, which receives over 500,000 hits a day

Results:

My marketing efforts, namely the radio promotion, drove tens of thousands of votes all at once, which unfortunately  caused the competition’s tallying system to shut down.  Validation emails that acknowledge a person’s registration and allow them to vote were not sent until the day after the competition ended.

In summary, Romo did not win. But the marketing worked to perfection, and without a flaw in the tallying program, this marketer would have been $1 million dollars richer (actually $900,000)… and likely not writing this blog.