H-E-B Asks Shoppers to Make Ads

Real customers star
in H-E-B's new ads

Texas grocer H-E-B is asking shoppers to produce and star in TV spots for an ad campaign that breaks next week with the new tagline "My H-E-B."

The campaign launched on Nov. 20 with TV spots starring three San Antonio Spurs players, highlighting H-E-B's penchant for tailoring each store to its neighborhood. Spots starring real H-E-B shoppers will run through the holidays.

Then on Feb. 4, during the Super Bowl, H-E-B will kick off a contest inviting shoppers to submit their own ads, telling stories of their personal experience with "their" HEB.

Entries will be posted on a dedicated site, MyH-E-B.com, where consumers vote for their favorites. Winning spots will air as part of H-E-B's campaign; their creators will get cash prizes and gift cards.

The contest is open-ended: H-E-B plans to refresh it seasonally with new topics for shoppers to tackle. "It will be very seasonal in nature," said Kate Rogers, H-E-B director of advertising.

The grocer also will send camera crews to local events (starting with a football game between rivals University of Texas and Texas A&M) to film Texans talking about their own experiences at H-E-B.

H-E-B's rolling contest is a unique take on the fast-growing trend of consumer-generated ads. At least three marketers plan to air consumer-made ads during the Super Bowl: Frito-Lay (Doritos), Chevrolet and the NFL are in the middle of contests fielding TV spots (or storyboards, in Chevy's case), using a combination of internal judging and consumer voting to pick their Super Bowl winners (PROMO Xtra, Nov. 3, 2006).

H-E-B's promotion shop, New York-based The A Team, handles the contest. The Richards Group, Dallas, handles advertising for San Antonio-based H-E-B. That shop created the tagline and first ads that star Spurs players Tim Duncan, Brent Barry and Gregg Popovich. Each man begins by saying "This is my H-E-B commercial," then tells a funny story about shopping at H-E-B.

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