http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqT_dPApj9U&feature=player_embedded
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le_SSNz09aE&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/user/cocacola
http://www.cybermonday.com/

People like free things. Whenever a company offers a promotion on products, two-for-one’s, free giveaways and such, customers eat it up. Being as it’s a tried and true method, companies also know it works. If a company is trying to get their name out there or introduce a new line of product, this tactic gets a lot of results.

Even well established companies use product promotions to further advance their customer base. In the case of Coca-Cola, the Coke Company has recently been using promotional give-aways and also filming these promotions on their Youtube channel (link below or in the sidebar). One of the more recent videos on the site is one that features a vending machine in an undisclosed college commons area where after purchasing a 20oz bottle of coke, the vending machine would then proceed to spit out multiple bottles of coke. It then proceeded to hand out flowers, pizzas, liter bottles of their product, and even a very large submarine sandwich. This stems out of their message at the fore of the video to “share happiness” with the students. The description goes on about doling out “doses of happiness”. Previous to this, Coke had also started a similar campaign in which the company sent out a team to give away a Live Nation $100.00 gift-card to random people who happen to have a coke product in their hand (link below or in the side bar). This not only incentivized the people receiving the gift card into staying loyal to Coke, but it also sends a message to those of us in the rest of their market, “Buy Coke, you may win something.”

It seems to be a very rough game, though, if you don’t have notoriety. Many of us are familiar with banners, sidebars, pop ups, and page takeovers. In fact, those of us taking this class should be very familiar with them. Now I don’t know about you, but I’ve trained myself to ignore a lot of such attempts at inundating my attention to a myriad of these advertisements. We even have programs to block many of those sorts of advertising. Despite this, I find even myself, at times, having my eyes drawn to a particular ad that piques my interest. Even though this lends to the fact that these types of advertisements do in-fact work, getting the right sort of attention among the veritable plethora of junk ads can be a bit daunting.

Online promotions have made big headway into holiday shopping, as well. These last few major holidays have seen a huge push for product deals online comparable to those in stores, especially during the yearly Black Friday shopping rush. The Monday after the holiday has even been coined Cyber Monday, providing bargain-hunters, since they’re not as die-hard as some, an outlet to shopping deals that normally they would have to wait out in the 4:00am chill for. In fact, there’s even a Cybermonday.com, listing a cornucopia of merchants with online promotions. Perhaps not as expensive as television ads, much to the relief of those companies using online advertisement, is becoming a large part of advertising strategy.