“Mike’s Aluminum Anniversary”

Best Use of Games, Contests, and Sweepstakes
& Best Idea or Concept

Mike’s Aluminum Anniversary
Agency: Alcone Marketing Group
Client: Mike’s Hard Lemonade

Mike’s Hard Lemonade’s key selling season is between Memorial Day and Labor Day, representing approximately 60% of the brand’s annual sales. Securing early season display support with activity continuing throughout the summer is critical to Mike’s success, but difficult to attain as it competes against the larger beer brands. Alcone was charged with increasing sales and market share for 2009.

Alcone developed a sweepstakes that celebrated Mike’s 10th anniversary. Since aluminum is the gift to give on a 10th anniversary, they called the campaign “Mike’s Aluminum Anniversary” and proceeded to give away “the mother load of aluminum prizes.”

To incent purchase, entry codes were printed under bottle caps, driving consumers to mikeshard.com to enter. The prize pool consisted of 10 different aluminum/metal-based prize items, the grand prize being a shiny new Airstream Trailer; while other prizes included bicycles, laptops, coolers and tailgating items.

For retailers, Alcone created a corrugated “Mike’s Edition” Airstream Trailer display. The front and back served as scalable bookends, between which retailers could stock any amount of Mike’s merchandise. Additional POS included case cards, static clings, wobblers, table tents, coasters and banners.

To promote incremental display support, they developed the “Cooking with Aluminum Foil” program and partnered with Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs & Stubb’s BBQ Sauce for items that could be place on or wrapped in foil and fired up on a grill. A near-pack booklet provided recipes and coupons.

The anniversary promotion led Mike’s to its best sales summer in company history, with sales up 12%. More than 780,000 consumers entered the sweepstakes, surpassing Mike’s previous best by 55%.

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