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Korbel New Year?s Eve promotion garners 1,500-plus texted toasts

More than 1,500 New Year?s Eve revelers in Dallas, TX, texted in photos and toasts that were shared on screens sponsored by Korbel sparkling wine.

Attendees of Dallas? annual Big D NYE celebration as well as those watching it on TV were asked to offer toasts to the upcoming year, which were exhibited on a dedicated Korbel GoVision screen during the celebration. Eligible participants were also entered into a sweepstakes for a chance to win a trip to the Korbel winery in Sonoma, CA.

?Mobile gave us the ability to extend the reach of the campaign,? said Brian Teague, chief technology evangelist at Pocketstop, Dallas.

?Anyone watching the event on TV who had a phone with them could register right then and there,? he said. ?If they were on site, they could do the same thing be sending in a text message to a keyword.

?They didn?t have to go to a Web site or pull out an iPad ? we made registration extremely simple.?

Big-screen engagement
Korbel was looking to drive awareness of its sparkling wine on a night when champagne and other sparkling wines are top of mind for consumers. It also wanted to engage the audience with a branded screen at an event.

The screens featured real-time New Year?s toasts, photos and Korbel promotional announcements.
Leading up to the event, the Korbel ?Toast Life? sweepstakes was promoted on TV. Consumers could register for the contest by completing an entry form on the Big D NYE Web site or by sending a text message with the keyword ?NYE? to a short code.

Social CRM marketing agency Pocketstop coordinated the text-based sweepstakes and managed the interactive screen promotion at the event.

In order to ensure that each entrant was age appropriate, the Pocketstop Social CRM platform automatically responded to each text message with a reply asking for a date of birth.

Qualified participants were entered into Korbel?s database and given the option to get future incentives from the company. Those who were too young to participate were given a ?Happy New Year? text and were not entered in the database.

Approximately 1,500 people texted toasts,  an increase of more than 279 percent over the previous year?s sign-ups. More than 30,000 people attended the New Year?s Eve event.

The 5th Annual Big D NYE celebration was produced in partnership with WFAA television and American Airlines Center and held in Victory Park in Dallas.

?When you can get someone to look directly at the screen at an event like this, the brand recall is very high,? Mr. Teague said. ?People could send in text messages, which really draws your attention to the screen.

?There were other screens at the event that weren?t interactive,? he said. ?Based on the fact that ours is interactive and had personalized content made it different than the other screens that were there.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York