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Humerous Ads Find
Devoted Readership
White Plains, N.Y., trades Laughs for testimonials
When Barbara Moroch, then marketing manager of The Journal News in
White Plains, N.Y., was planning a Classified contest, all she had to do was
read them. Within the pages of The Journal News Classifieds, Moroch spotted The
Classified Guys’ syndicated column and began brainstorming.
The
idea
Moroch ran a four-week contest called “Laughs to Loot”.
Working with The Classified Guys Moroch used material from the "Laughs For
Sale" section from their feature and placed it within the real private party
ads in The Journal News Classifieds. She labeled the end of each funny ad with
the code "L2L". Readers sought out the Laughs For Sale in their daily or online
editions. Each week, readers that sent in all seven ads were entered in that
week’s drawing for $1,000. As the Laughs for Sale portion of the contest
ran, readers had the option to submit an essay on what they loved about The
Journal News Classifieds. The winner of the essay portion received $5,000, a
photo with The Classified Guys and a reprint of the winning essay in The
Classified Guys column. Although The Classified Guys column is syndicated in
more than 100 newspapers, a special version of the column featuring the essay
was printed soley in The Journal News. Overall $9,000 was given away in
prizes.
The implementation
Moroch received permission from
The Classified Guys to use their format and branding for the contest forms and
to run the winning essay in place of the column while using their template. She
also requested their assistance in two key areas of the contest. “We
supplied the Laughs For Sale, which they used to run a phony ad and allowed
people to be part of a drawing for cash prizes. Also, we made ourselves
available for a photo shoot with the winner,” explained Todd
“Carry” Holze, one of The Classified Guys.
The
results
Throughout the four weeks the ad search ran, The Journal News
received 1,300 entries. Of those 1,300 entries, 90% of them used the print
section to find the Laughs For Sale. “We thought the minute our readers
found out that those bogus ads were online they’d go straight to our Web
site, but that wasn’t the case at all. We opened the entries and they were
all newspaper clippings. We were shocked,” Moroch recalled. In addition to
the weekly entries, Moroch received 200 entries for the essay contest. Of those
200, about 60 required closer examination. Out of the final 10, one was
selected for the $5,000 grand prize and a photo session with The Classified
Guys.
Making the most of it
While only one person could win
the essay contest, Moroch was quick to call the other finalists and ask
permission to use their essays for future testimonials. “I was thinking as
I crafted this contest that whatever essays were good but didn’t win would
provide fabulous material for ongoing testimonial campaigns. It was an
efficient plan where we used as much as we could,” Moroch noted. When the
contest ended, the newspaper had received 1,500 entries for its Laughs to Loot
contests, proving Moroch had successfully reached her goal of driving
readership into the classifieds.
For future reference
Moroch
highly recommends working with syndicated columnists to gain reader attention
and promote the columnists. The mutually beneficial arrangement for
“Laughs to Loot” helped localize The Classified Guys while increasing
The Journal News Classifieds’ readership. The Classified Guys were excited
to help as a way to thank their customers. Also, the testimonials can have an
impact on the newspaper staff. “People really place value onto the
classifieds section. It makes you see that there are people who are attached to
the product, and as a result, you want to do a better job for them. It was very
interesting to see how the classifieds impact their lives, and it makes you
look at the classified section with new eyes. “It was a good contest and I
loved the idea of leveraging The Classified Guys because we do run them as a
feature. It all worked together very well,” Moroch said. |
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