A new contest by Future Shop has the country’s back-to-school crowd hunting down codes across its digital, print and in-store media as part its new Hunt. Gather. Win! contest.
Targeting the Gen Y crowd, consumers are invited to create a profile on the contest site where they can then plug in codes for weekly prizes from LG.
Participants are encouraged to browse for and pick up codes hidden in key back-to-school categories (laptops, cell phones, MP3 players) while shopping online on Futureshop.ca, when leafing through its flyers where codes are hidden each week, when joining online discussions on Future Shop Community Forums or by taking a closer look at in-store signage at Future Shop locations across the country. Subscribing to Future Shop’s weekly eNewsletter also provides codes, and participants who tell friends about the campaign get additional credits when they sign up. The code-hunter with the most credits at the end of the contest, which wraps Sept. 10, gets the grand prize: a $10,000 LG shopping spree at Future Shop.
Blending both traditional and digital marketing elements, the campaign, designed by Vancouver-based online marketing firm October 17 Media, has already amassed some 6,600 players since it launched on Friday, and 300,000 page views on the contest site. Handled internally by the media team at Future Shop, media elements used to raise awareness for the contest include Facebook (where participants are invited to become a fan on Future Shop’s Facebook page and, of course, keep an eye out for codes) and good ‘ol Twitter, where Future Shop is tweeting codes using three accounts.
The contest allows the retailer to track traffic to Futureshop.ca and to its Community Forum, as well as online sales, and overall engagement and conversation surrounding the contest. Nikki Hellyer, director of marketing at Future Shop tells MiC there’s been ‘tremendous spikes’ in the retailer’s number of newsletter subscribers, Facebook fans and followers on Twitter, ‘some in the thousands.’
‘Recently, the focus by many has been on social and online marketing, not on integration, with traditional distribution channels that already exist,’ says Tamara Brooks, co-founder of October 17 Media in a recent release. ‘What’s amazing about Future Shop’s back-to-school contest is it encourages customers to interact and participate with their brand online and offline. It’s an advertising campaign that rewards entrants for connecting with the brand on a variety of marketing channels, not just one.’
