Victoria Barbadoro, associate brand building manager at I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, talks about the success of this summer’s Spraychel for President digital campaign.
Q: Where did the idea for Spraychel come from?
A: The idea was to have an animated character in a soap opera setting. In essence, Spraychel is a spray bottle of margarine. So she is a character and a physical product. This was the fourth year we’ve used her in a campaign. It’s a great way to deliver our message, but not in a heavily branded way.
Q: Can you describe this year’s campaign?
A: This year’s campaign launched on June 23. Because it’s an election year, we decided this year’s program would be focused around Spraychel running for president of the refrigerator. She ran against Maxwell Butterman, who represented an old-fashioned way of eating. We asked folks to elect Spraychel and offered them a chance to enter and win $400,000 in a presidential salary sweepstakes.
Q: What were its elements?
A: The campaign cornerstone was the votespraychel.com microsite. People could watch six webisodes that followed Spraychel on the campaign trail. The webisodes also aired on ComCast Interactive and DirectTV. We had causal games with instant-win Target gift card prizes tied to play. Spraychel also had her own Facebook fan page.
Q: How did you drive people to the microsite and TV components?
A: Traffic was also driven to the microsite from the brand’s home page. We also did in-store promotional packaging and e-mail outreach. We had a partnership with the MSN Games network, which included ads throughout the MSN network and on the MSN Games page. Mark McGrath [Sugar Ray band member and host of Extra], who did the voice for Spraychel’s brother and campaign manger, also did some PR for the campaign.
Q: Is the campaign still on-going?
A: The campaign officially ended on July 27, though the campaign’s iTV component ran through August. The sweepstakes and instant win prizes are now over, but the microsite will stay live until the end of the year.
Q: What are the results?
A: Spraychel received more than 430,000 votes. Over 1.1 million webisodes have been seen. Usually, folks spent 6.5 minutes with Spraychel.
