RocketCash.com, a Web site that allows children to shop without a credit card, has teamed up with poultry producer Foster Farms to launch a $250,000 co-branded marketing effort designed to lure offline traffic online.
The Bite Into a Thousand Dollars promotion involves the nationwide distribution of 39 million Foster Farms corn dogs. Children who eat these corn dogs stand a chance to win $25 to $1,000 in RocketCash, which they can then use to buy what they want through that site’s network of retailers.
“RocketCash, as a company, is enabling consumer package goods companies to turn offline rewards into online money,” said Carol Kruse, vice president of marketing at RocketCash Corp.
The promotion is advertised on each Foster Farms corn dog stick, which come in packs of 18 priced from $5.16 to $5.99. The sweepstakes winners then log on to www.fosterfarms.rocketcash.com to redeem their prizes, open and fund RocketCash accounts and shop online with the site’s 90 retailers.
Visitors to the co-branded site can also enter a second-chance sweepstakes to win one of six $1,000 prizes sponsored by CD Universe, GamePro, PacSun, Reel.com, TopHatToys and TSI Soccer. All retailers accept RocketCash.
Jeff Buchoff, prepared foods marketing manager at Foster Farms, finds the deal with RocketCash attractive in two ways. It benefits directly from sales generated as a result of the promotion and indirectly by being associated with RocketCash and the Internet.
“The sweepstakes provides an incentive to 'buy now,' thereby generating incremental business,” Buchoff said. “The theory is that our young consumers will campaign specifically for Foster Farms and hopefully influence the purchaser parent’s brand decision.”
Based in Mountain View, CA, the 10-month-old RocketCash service allows children to open accounts through checks, money orders, prizes or deposits from parents’ credit cards.
The partnership with Foster Farms benefits RocketCash in that it is yet another tactic to draw offline traffic to its site. Once there, children may not only open accounts at RocketCash but also shop with its merchants. RocketCash takes a cut of sales for directing traffic to those merchants.
The benefit for Foster Farms is even bigger, however. Based in Livingstone, CA, the 61-year-old marketer produces and delivers over 650 million pounds of turkey and fresh chicken throughout the western United States. It also sells corn dogs but to only grocery stores.
Sponsorship of the sweepstakes prizes through this promotion is designed to increase consumption of Foster Farms products by children and teen-agers. The deal with RocketCash is yet another way to reach children in an online environment where they spend a lot of time.
“What that does for Foster Farms is have a really compelling, fun promotional offer to give which is Internet-focused,” Kruse said. “Because [Foster Farms] is not going to sell corn dogs on the Internet, but they want to do something that’s so important to their target audience.”
