Digital CPG Blog

“The number of special product promotions featuring digital coupons increased 84% between the first half of 2009 and the first half of 2010 — largely thanks to new marketing initiatives via retailer Web sites and social media, according to Kantar Media, which operates a Web site-tracking service called Marx,” reports Erik Sass.

“Focusing in on retailer Web sites specifically, Kantar-Marx found that the number of manufacturers staging promotion events with digital coupons (268) surpassed the number using traditional print freestanding inserts (213) — another sign of their growing popularity.”

Part of the increase of digital coupons is a CPG brand’s willingness to use social media sites like Twitter and Facebook to spread the word and gain exposure. And for consumers who no longer want to take the time and energy to clip coupons, digital coupon events are a great way to increase customer loyalty.

Lay’s is offering a taste of farm life with its mobile greenhouse tour, which aims to offer a peek at the “rural farm experience,” reports BrandFreak.

The campaign is an effort to spotlight real, local farmers and is an extension of the ad campaign that launched last year featuring the farmers that grow potatoes for Lay’s. Once inside the bus, visitors can meet Lay’s potato farmers and learn about the chip-making process.

“At the end of each visit (the tour includes six cities altogether), Lay’s will donate the mobile farm’s contents to nearby community gardens, to encourage the planting of fruits and vegetables in metropolitan areas. The initiative taps into the localvore craze and offers a less taxing way to get in touch with your food sources than actually visiting a farm,” BrandFreak reported.

From the photo, it looks like Lay’s is setting up shop in Target store parking lots in some areas. In New York, Lay’s rolled into Times Square and not without some dissention. “When Frito-Lay wheeled its new promotion for Lay’s potato chips — a 70-foot long, 10-foot wide traveling greenhouse — into the crowded urban chaos of Times Square today, it became the latest large food company to awkwardly attempt to exploit a food trend that has largely left them out in the cold — the local food movement,” argued Melanie Warner of BNET.

Although I suspect most locavores will see right through this effort, it’s interesting that Lay’s is making the effort to tap into this important trend.

In a twist on finding the golden ticket, Brazilian company Omo Detergent is set to find their customers using GPS-enabled products. Starting this week, Omo is embedding 50 detergent boxes with GPS devices as part of a new video camera giveaway. E-Consultancy reports:

If something goes wrong with the search, or it takes too long, the boxes come equipped with a note explaining the promotion and prize offering (essentially the traditional approach to such things.)

But Omo and their promotions agency Bullet are mostly interested in documenting the entire thing. Omo’s products are already in 80% of Brazilian homes. This campaign is mostly intended to draw attention to the new stain-fighting Omo product.

The brand’s website, with the tagline “try something new,” in August will start documenting the details of the campaign, including a map with rough estimates of where the winners live, their pictures and video footage of the marketing team tracking down the owners of the GPS detergent.

While the company has already taken some flack for privacy concerns, I’m thinking this is a genius mash-up of Willy Wonka’s golden ticket and Ed McMahon showing up at your door. It’s different, whimsical and sure to breed some excitement among already loyal Omo customers.