| EVENT REPORT 12.18.08 3:31 PM |
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Duracell Lights Up New Year Sign With Tourist-Powered Battery in Times Square
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 | Duracell's "snowmobikes"
Photo: Stuart Ramson |
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Battery giant Duracell jumped back into the pop-up store ring on December 2 with its Duracell Power Lodge, an interactive lounge in Times Square for consumers to relax and provide the green energy needed to light the "2009" sign on New Year's Eve. Open from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday through Wednesday, and as late as 11 p.m., Thursday through Saturday, producers expect the space will see upwards of 400,000 guests by month's end.
Duracell has long been absent from the world of experiential marketing, but as Procter & Gamble assistant brand manager Scott W. Popham explained, it's a niche the brand decided to move back to. The perennial media attention from sister brand Charmin's stay in Times Square seemed enough to convince the company that the holiday pop-up concept might work for another brand on its roster, so it opened the Duracell space directly above Charmin's.
“We wanted to show consumers what we do every day—capture, store, and release energy—and show them on a larger scale,” said Popham. “So Duracell thought, what a better way than the New Years Eve ball drop?”
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RELATED TOPICS
Procter & Gamble, Duracell, Charmin, Pop-Ups |
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| EVENT INTELLIGENCE 04.10.08 10:30 AM |
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Building Buzz With Videos: Charmin's Free Public Bathrooms
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 | A consumer video of Charmin's Times Square stunt
Photo: Courtesy of WTC3353 |
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This story is part of our series on building event buzz with online videos.
A marketing event that got significant buzz in both the real and virtual worlds was Charmin’s 2006 and 2007 holiday promotion, in which the company installed free public bathrooms in New York’s Times Square. Accompanied by singers, dancers, and fun facts about flushing, the quirky event, produced by Charmin along with experiential marketing firm Gigunda Group and public relations firm Manning, Selvage & Lee, brought in 400,000 visitors each year. In a pleasant surprise for Charmin, several dozen of those people were so tickled with the happening that they recorded it with handheld cameras and posted the videos to YouTube—sharing Charmin’s event with thousands more viewers.
“The event was all about providing an opportunity for the consumer to engage in the brand in a different and more unusual, innovative way,” says Dewayne Guy, external relations manager at Charmin. “We put a lot of effort into making sure it was interactive, and that lends itself to the visual media. Online video is not something we actively pushed—it happened organically based on the consumer reactions.”
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RELATED TOPICS
Building Buzz With Online Videos, YouTube, Charmin |
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