Full Frontal PR Report
Kevin Mortesen

With the entertainment awards season behind us—and even with the Oscars® moved up a month it still seemed to go on forever—it’s time for the first installment of our mostly bi-annual Full Frontal Awards for Maximizing Partnerships and Promotions.

Our award recipients are companies that have created effective promotional and marketing sponsorships by tying into cultural trends and creating newsworthy opportunities, and have gained significant additional visibility (and—we expect—sales) for their brands. They understand that throwing money at a sponsorship is not enough—a healthy dose of Full Frontal PR adds real value to partnership activities.

There are no trophies, no cash prizes, no red carpet, and there really are no categories even. There is an appreciative nod to those companies taking chances, doing things right, maximizing their marketing dollar and generating buzz. Oh, and we’ll occasionally throw in an award for a program that makes no sense. Call it the “We Gotta Do Something” award.

Without further ado, here are our first honorees:

Visa and TLC’s What Not To Wear
In the first season of this fabulous fashion makeover program, the hosts provided the wardrobe-challenged subject with a five grand check to restock his or her closet according to the new rules. We thought this was nice; the stores the subjects visited got some national television play, some designers got a mention, but there had to be more.

They figured it out for the second season: The subjects now receive a pre-loaded Visa card. Every time a purchase is made, Visa gets a mention and visual ID. In a sense, Visa is a real-life character. Nicely done by both Visa and TLC—Visa for going beyond a commercial mention and TLC for continuing their tradition of embedding sponsors into their programming. Life might be unscripted on TLC, but solid sponsor programs are so well planned!

Marquis Jets and NBC’s The Apprentice
Tying in with The Donald on a business proposition seems like a no-brainer, but tying in with him on a new TV gig? Certainly not a slam dunk—at least not before the “I want to be a tycoon” series took over Must See TV. Yet there was Marquis and a few other companies who opened their doors to a cast of misfits looking to attain riches; they are reaping the benefits of big numbers now. Way to go!

Marquis gets the nod as top dog here because of a brilliant play by one of the competitors on the show: The winning team last week decided the only way to make money off of a Pedi-Cab service was to brand them with ads, Marquis once again was in bright lights by loading up the team with hats and T’s. , Therefore they extended their association with the show through advertising after the fact. Producer Mark Burnett (Survivor) gets Special Mention here, as the reality kingpin has always made product a part of the “storyline.”.

Wal-Mart and NASCAR [Dads]
Talk about numbers. Tie these two super powers together, and you are reaching so many households it’s almost un-countable! That’s what they did with a super cool Fan Day promotion. It’s not new— they’ve done it three times—but by moving the date to coincide with the season-opening (and arguably biggest motor sports event in the world), the Daytona 500, the omnipresent retailer and sports-sponsorship combo-naut drove awareness for each other with interactive events in Wal-Marts throughout this proud big box nation of ours.

And there’s more. Even better they integrated consumer product lines featured at Wal-Mart who also have a tie with NASCAR, such as Kodak, Energizer and Wrangler…and actively drove (get it, drove?) wildly trackable traffic to the stores. Talk about merchandise careening off the shelves! They also created a pretty wonderful on-site media opportunity or two, what with remote control, NASCAR sponsor-branded vehicles racing through the aisles. Definitely a Winner’s Circle moment.

If you have a campaign you think worthy of a future Full Frontal Award, tell us about it and be proud. Oh and win awards—by telling editor@RLMpr.com.