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Nestle's PowerBar targets skiers with in-app ads

Nestlé?s PowerBar is targeting consumers who are hitting the slopes this winter with an ad campaign within the App Store?s most downloaded snow report application, Ski Report.

The campaign is led by appssavvy, a direct sales team for the social media space, in partnership with PowerBar?s agency OIC. The campaign landing page offers winter sports enthusiasts mobile access to nutritional information, athlete profiles, videos and free product samples of new PowerBar Gel Blasts energy chews via the iPhone application from SkiReport.com.

?With this partnership, PowerBar has the opportunity to leverage an existing application with an installed user base, rather than having to build it from scratch,? said Chris Cunningham, founder/CEO of appssavvy, New York. ?This model plays well for advertisers that want a branding opportunity for one, two or three months, because they don?t have to worry about driving installs.

?When you partner with an existing installed user base, we take your content and branding, in this case Nestle?s PowerBar, and find a contextually relevant fit, in this case the Ski Report app,? he said. ?The core demographic of the Ski Report app is 16 to 18-plus, really 18 to 40, and this is a huge, targeted audience to PowerBar.

?No one would dispute that the PowerBar brand would have an affinity to skiers and snowboarders, so it is a perfect fit.?

Owned by Nestlé S.A., which claims to be the world's largest food and beverage company, PowerBar sells food and beverage products to meet the dietary and energy needs of athletes.

PowerBar sponsors athletes and events including the Dew Tour, World Triathlon Corp., the Tour de France, the Chicago, Boston and ING New York City Marathons and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Team In Training Program.

OIC is an interactive marketing and brand communications agency. In addition to Nestlé, its clients include AMD, AT&T, Cathay Bank, Disney ABC Cable Networks, Intel, LG, Roxio and Sun Microsystems.

Appssavvy is a direct sales team that connects hundreds of social media applications on Facebook, MySpace, Google?s Android and Apple?s iPhone with leading brands and agencies.

The Ski Report application is all about bringing the latest snow information to winter sports thrill-seekers, as well as publishing back their reports and experiences on the slopes to the community.

Powering up mobile ads
The PowerBar ad campaign within the Ski Report iPhone application is timed to launch in support of the Winter Dew Tour, which kicked off last month and features top snowboarders and free-skiers.

The next Winter Dew Tour event begins later this week in West Dover, VT. 

The winter sport community is constantly on the go and looking for a quick resource of relevant information to support their outdoor experiences, according to PowerBar.

The brand cited the Ski Report application?s ability to deliver a wealth of practical winter ski and snow content, as well as nutritional information, as the reason for its sponsorship.

PowerBar?s sponsorship of the Ski Report runs through the end of March. It features full-screen branding as the application is loading.

Once the app loads, a full-screen landing page opens featuring the PowerBar logo and images of PowerBar Gel Blasts energy chews, giving consumers the option to try the new product for free.

If application users tap that call-to-action, they are redirected to a form, when they must enter their name, email address and mailing address to get their free Gel Blasts sample.

Once consumers continue on to access other content with the Ski Report application, banner ads across the bottom of the screen appear, opening the full-screen landing page when tapped.

?Every brand is trying to make sense of mobile and buy social media programs, and the intersection of social media and apps is everywhere,? Mr. Cunningham said. ?It?s exciting, but you have to understand what the opportunities are and how to execute them?we can help brands identify opportunities, build a strategy and execute.

?PowerBar will feel excited and proud that they leveraged a great app with utility benefits and they?re playing in the mobile space,? he said. ?More importantly, they didn?t take any major risks by building their own app and having to spend a lot to promote it.

?The campaign just started, and it?s already performing way beyond expectations.?