May 22, 2008

Vespa gets smart sweepstakes

Italian scooter brand Vespa, property of Piaggio Group Americas, is speeding along on a multichannel, co-promotional campaign that leverages the Vespa's LX 150's appearance in the Warner Brothers feature film “Get Smart.”

The sweepstakes effort launched earlier this week and features 10 Vespas as grand prizes as well as free food and gear. It is the first time Vespa has used a promotion that combines a major fast food chain – Subway – and a feature film.

“Subway represents a healthy alternative and Vespa offers a healthy alternative mode of transportation,” said Paolo Timoni, president and CEO of Piaggio Group Americas, in an e-mail. “We hope that new consumers will learn more about the benefits of scootering and how fun and economical using a Vespa for your everyday travel is, especially with the high gas prices.”

Vespa is running a tile ad on VespaUSA.com and sending e-mail blasts to the VespaUSA e-mail database in June and July. Subway is also promoting the partnership with in-store, TV and radio ads along with e-mail blasts to its own database of 1.2 million users.

“We will gauge the success on the number of people who interacted with the sweepstakes,” Timoni said. “Of that number, how many clicked on the links to our page to receive the free helmet coupon and ultimately went to the dealership to purchase a scooter.”

Vespa plans to use the leads from the promotion to engage and educate consumers on Vespa products and promotions, in addition to sales leads for its dealer network. This is not the first time the company has used a summer movie to run a sweepstakes – last year Vespa created a sweepstakes that was advertised on movie and gamer Web sites around the film Transformers. According to Timoni, the entry results exceeded expectations.

This year's Vespa promotion with Get Smart and Subway is aiming to appeal across generations.

“[Vespa] is one of those few brands that can remain cool and relevant if you are a 20-something or 50-something,” Timoni said. “The three brands are a fit because the movie and Subway restaurants will allow Vespa to communicate with the hard-to-reach and highly desirable young adults who are Subway's core users and fans of both Steve Carrel and Anne Hathaway, while hopefully pulling in consumers who were viewers of the original Get Smart TV series in the 1960s.”