Ways to Engage Your Customers

I recently ran across a video that’s too good not to share. In fact, it’s so good that it got me thinking about ways in which businesses are engaging their customers. Just thinking didn’t do me much good; all I came up with was the usual suspects, from uploading photos and videos to running contests.

First I took a look at Super Bowl 2011. Not ready to hear about the Super Bowl yet? Neither am I, really, but if you are going to do a social media promotion you have to start early. What I found was a list of contests:

• Doritos is back with what appears to be the 5th year of “Crash the Super Bowl” video contest according to a good post on how these things are run.
• Pepsi concluded its not-for-profit effort from last year and is running a video contest off the same “crash” site; good leverage
• Go Daddy, famous for over-the-top ads, is running a contest this year. Wonder what kind of entries they will get??
• This one is worth including for Troy Polamalu’s hair alone, although the sweepstakes appears to be more tied to the NFL season than to the Super Bowl.

• GM is giving weekly winners tickets to the Super Bowl and one Sierra Denali pickup. Seems to me they would have gotten more brand buzz if they had reversed that, but I guess even Super Bowl tickets are cheaper than a truck, even if you are GM!

Then fast forward to today. Just as I was beginning this post I saw an article on Subway’s new Facebook based-promotion. It is described as “a new crowd-sourced entertainment program… dubbed Subway High School Heroes.” At its heart it is a contest to nominate people who have been influential in the lives of teens—a worthy endeavor—but it has entertainment elements beyond the usual contest. Check it out.

Back to my starting point. The Tipp Experience video has been achieved viral status this fall. While that’s difficult to do, if you’ll just take a minute and play (with) this video, you’ll see the heights consumer engagement can reach!