The Partnership

To gain awareness of the Tom’s brand, Tom’s launched a first quarter partnership with Total Non-Stop Action (TNA), a professional wrestling franchise featured on Spike TV.

As a part of this partnership, TNA and Tom’s are promoting a contest around TNA’s ‘Slammiversary’. This contest allows a lucky Tom’s snacker to be sent to Universal Studios in Orlando where they will be awarded a TNA Wrestling contract for a day. They will receive a plane trip, overnight hotel accommodations, inclusion in special TNA VIP parties, as well as participate in the TNA Slammiversary event and receive ringside seats to the event.

The Promotion

To help promote the contest, Tom’s developed a series of limited-edition Tom’s Snack bags that feature TNA Wrestlers on their top five varieties of Fries and Thick & Bold chips. The contest has also been promoted on their website and talked about heavily on their Facebook page. This messaging about TNA on the Facebook page has become a big player in this promotion; Tom’s has dedicated one of their Facebook tabs to the TNA contest and frequently posts about the TNA Wrestlers.

The Incentive

On top of dedicating some real estate on their Facebook page to TNA Wrestling, Tom’s created a coupon offering FREE product ($1.50 offer) to their first 10,000 fans. This incentive was pushed as a Facebook post AND tweeted by Dixie Carter, the president of TNA, who has nearly 80,000 followers.

The Results

As soon as Dixie’s tweet hit the web, the coupon promotion took off like wildfire. Within a matter of minutes, Tom’s Facebook page had jumped from 400 fans to 1,000. Each second, dozens of new fans started following Tom’s. Coupon bloggers picked up Dixie Carter’s tweet and started spreading the message via their blogs and Twitter accounts. By the third hour, Tom’s had reached their 10,000^th fan. Something that was estimated to take one to two months was done in a record number of hours.

The success of Tom’s facebook fan following was largely due to three factors.

• The TNA partnership gave the brand the leverage they needed to help reach their main target audience: men 18-39.
• The incentive to “like” the Tom’s Snacks page in order to gain access to FREE product via the $1.50 offer.
• But the most direct factor was Carter’s tweet. She not only had a large following but a strong voice with many of her Twitter followers taking action to “like” Tom’s Snacks to cash in on the offer.

Tom’s has been overjoyed with the success of the partnership and is excited by the future opportunities this partnership presents.

The lesson reinforced with this example is two-fold: the power of the RIGHT partnership coupled with the nearly instant gratification of social media.

(Caution: Graphic Video)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I54mlK0kVw

The “PSA Texting and Driving“ gained a lot of hype last week. If you are unfamiliar with this is Public Service Announcement (PSA), it was created in Wales, U.K., by a local police department targeting the dangers associated with texting while driving. The more than four-minute video, targeted at teenagers, is a powerful and haunting dramatization depicting different scenarios of driving while texting.

Due to the graphic nature of the PSA, much of the U.S. media coverage has surrounded the legality of showing it on U.S. television. However, when U.S. TV viewers realized they were not being shown the entire PSA, many were intrigued and turned to the Internet to view the PSA in its entirety on YouTube (a very similar situation that also occurred with the GoDaddy Super Bowl commercials). [Please note, due to the graphic nature of this message, there now is an age restriction posted.]

The Power of the Internet

In the case of the “PSA Texting and Driving,” the Internet opened the viewing channels for a video otherwise banned from U.S. television and created a visibility via YouTube reaching more than two million views and thousands of comments from around the world as of September 3.

The overwhelming response from U.S. parents and teens on this PSA sparked the interest of many reputable U.S. journalists, including Ann Curry of NBC’s Today Show.

In a recent interview with Donny Deutsch, chairman of Deutsch Inc., and host of CNBC’s “The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch,” Curry inquired about the graphic nature of the PSA and the legalities behind airing it on U.S. television.

Television in the U.S. will have problems airing this but there are many programs currently airing on TV that show violent/graphic footage solely for entertainment purposes. This PSA really is no different and most likely is more effective since it serves a greater purpose other than pure entertainment.

Texting while driving is a serious issue and must be stopped for the safety of all drivers and passengers. For example, just the other night a woman in Baltimore was in a car accident and admitted to police that prior to crashing her car she had been texting.

It seems that the combination of the very graphic nature of this PSA in addition to statistics and word of mouth about this issue is creating an awareness level that is growing by the minute.

Deutsch said it best to Curry in their recent interview when he explained the power of a visual element in conjunction with statistics, etc.

“It’s one thing if I just say to you, ‘You know what, Ann, you increase your risk 23 times when texting,’ and you go, ‘OK.’ We hear the numbers, we hear of the fatalities, but you never actually see it this graphic. It is a phenomenal piece of tape. When you show something this graphic, it stays in people’s heads.”

This PSA does stay with people. It’s been a topic of conversation for weeks and I would expect it to be a regular topic of conversation between parents and teens for quite some time. This PSA has already started to save people’s lives. And, to me, one life saved is well worth showing the graphic nature of this video on television.