Unique Promotion - Nintendo Brings a Resort Feeling to New York City

People strolling the streets of Manhattan wearing flower leis is not a common sight. Unless of course they had just left the Wii Sports Resort event held in the middle of Times Square.

Nintendo has high hopes for its Wii Resort title. It feels that the game, which allows players to use its motion-sensitive control to play 12 games, including ping-pong, basketball and golf, can be a big seller throughout the holiday season.

To draw attention to the new title, it took over Military Island in the middle of Times Square. Here, passersby were treated to a mini-vacation. Based on the game's setting, Wuhu Island, event organizers set up a sandy beach, swimming pool and tropical lounge. People could also try their hand at the new game days before its July 26 launch. The event was promoted via public relations outreach and a billboard on the side of the Toys "R" Us building a few feet away.

Gossip Girl star Chace Crawford was on hand to mingle and try out the game. Top Frisbee and ping-pong players were also in attendance to compete against tourists and locals who stopped by. Each received a branded lei as a thank you for visiting Wuhu Island.

"Given the resort theme of Wii Sports Resort, we wanted to create an event that offered consumers a mini-vacation in the middle of the day," says Denise Kaigler, vice president of corporate affairs at Nintendo of America Inc. "Just as one might receive a lei upon arriving at a resort, we offered Wii Sports Resort-branded leis to consumer participants. This added to the festive nature of the event."

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Unique Promotion - Mott's Gets Its Pink On

Mott's applesauce set out this summer to prove that it

is "Pink to the Core." In support of Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure, the brand launched the limited-edition Mott's Plus applesauce and Healthy Harvest applesauce, available through October.

In addition to pledging $300,000 to the organization, Mott's also became the national sponsor of the 2009 Race for the Cure Series, the world's largest series of 5K runs and walks that raise funds for and awareness about breast cancer and breast health. The race is run in more than 120 cities in five countries.

At the events, Mott's handed out branded, reusable black cloth tote bags, free product samples and a flyer with a coupon for $1 off a six-pack of applesauce. There was also an apple tree activity onsite where attendees filled out an apple cutout and hung it on the tree, thus pledging to be pink to the core. Susan G. Komen Race for The Cure, launched in 1982, has raised more than $1.3 billion to fight breast cancer.

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A sales pipeline - what's alfalfa got to do with it?

This is a very interesting story with many great points about building and managing a sales pipeline.  I hope you enjoy it too.

A sales pipeline - what's alfalfa got to do with it?
By Frank Donny, The Richardson Company

I learned about having a sales pipeline at a very early age. But I did not know it at the time. It was back in the 70’s on the family farm in Southern Wisconsin. You see, my dad grew and sold alfalfa (aka hay) for a living. He raised it on the family farm and sold it to large dairies and horse farms all across the Midwest and Southeast. Harvesting alfalfa was a very labor intensive process back in those days and I have a bad back to prove it. But so was his accounting process. He actually had this big ledger book. It was always open on his desk. He seemed to manage his entire business from this one book. I had no idea of its importance.

His list of clients and prospects were in the book. He posted all orders with full detail of purchase price, cost of goods, trucking, and profit margin. When demand was slow, he would page through the book and look for farmers to call. He would log the calls with a simple check mark next to the name. When he made a sale, it would go in a special section where he would track the order until it arrived at the client's farm. Does this process sound familiar? Folks, this simple log book was a CRM system.

My dad had a pipeline. Rudimentary to be sure, but he had one – to sell alfalfa. He knew what went in to the top of the pipeline, what got stuck, what leaked, what was discontinued, and what concluded in a sale. He had a full understanding of his bid-to-close ratio and his conversion rates. He focused on his pipeline daily, kept accurate records and used the information to forecast how much money he needed to raise to pay the bills and make a small profit.

He never used any of those fancy words like bid-to-close, balance or conversion rates. If I called him right now and asked him what his late stage conversion rates are, he would ask me if I’ve been drinking. Business has certainly changed and become much more complex. I would say that the required nuts-n-bolts of managing a pipeline are the same today, as when I first experienced them in the 70’s. The moral of this story is get back to the basics. Take a look at how you manage your pipeline. Are you using a sound process? Are you collecting and keeping quality data for forecasting? Are you focused on the entire pipeline and looking for leakage and stagnant areas? Do you know your conversion rates down to the rep level? Are you coaching to the pipeline? These are just a few, but big areas, you should be focusing on.

This past June, my family and I visited the farm, as we do every year. During that visit, I took a minute to peek in my dad’s office. Guess what? There on his big desk was the ledger. Sound business fundamentals never go out of style.