04
- November
2010
Posted By : Tracy Pepe
Outdoor TEXAS Grill

Tracy’s Scented Spaces Series

Most of us are familiar with outdoor aromas—rich dimensions of charcoal, burning sugar, pungent BBQ sauce, roasting chicken, ribs—heavenly. For me, this is family time. A space where we enjoy each other’s company, and an opportunity where my brother-in-law gets to ruin the meat. But that just doesn’t matter, the smells are captivating and awesome.

So the concept of my clients next campaign made perfect sense to me—recreate that outdoor BBQ scent experience, using a Keith Urban concert and promoting KC Masterpiece® Barbecue Sauce and Kingsford® Charcoal. Last summer’s campaign entailed an American-style barbecue tour as headline, sponsors of the Keith Urban Escape Together World Tour which hit 49 cities across the United States. In sponsoring the tour, the barbecue brands aimed to encourage consumers to grill in their own backyards by tying in yet another cultural component to the American backyard barbecuing experience—country music. The fit was particularly organic since Urban and band identify with slowing down and coming together with friends and family during their hectic tour schedule.

In order to forge the unique, collaborative partnership between Keith Urban, Kingsford and KC Masterpiece that would resonate with fans, a 360 degree marketing plan was created to achieve the brands’ objectives, market the tour, and provide more value to the consumer.

KC Masterpiece and Kingsford hosted the Keith Urban Backstage Barbecue Experience—VIP pre-show events where fans received a group photo opportunity with Keith Urban and listened to an intimate Urban acoustic performance while enjoying a delicious charcoal grilled menu.

Arena activation included interactive displays that allowed fans to engage with the brands in a fun and meaningful way. Displays were comprised of a smoking oversized grill tunnel, concourse signage, and several photo opps with a Keith Urban cut-out in a backyard BBQ setting along with BBQ scent technology to bring the smell of grilling to the event. Dry diffused scented banners were strategically based throughout the event. As patrons interacted with the concert, key areas had the aroma of BBQ as the backdrop.

During intermission, fans were treated to an Urban and grilling lifestyle-themed video that fired up fans for the Keith’s performance, and simultaneously promoted a call to the “Me, You and a Barbecue” national sweeps, as well as a “Hot Seat” ticket upgrade promotion.

Through unprecedented collaboration between artist and brands, the sponsorship was housed on keithurban.net rather than a brand-owned microsite. Within the site “tour section”, KC Masterpiece/Kingsford were able to share recipes, grilling tips, “how to” videos and trivia with Keith Urban fans.

Clorox’s national promotion, “Me, You and a BBQ” was hosted on keithurban.net with traffic driven from social media sites, mobile marketing and at-concert calls-to-action leading to a projected 600K entries.

The grand prize winners of the “Me, You and a BBQ” promotion received a VIP trip to Nashville, TN to attend a private backyard BBQ experience filled with family, friends, grilling, great music, and a chance to meet Keith himself. A number of other prizes included trips to three different concerts on the tour, grilling prize packs, and memberships to Keith’s online community.

To date, the sponsorship has driven more than 100 million media impressions. The custom aroma that was created for this campaign was used with the dry diffused application process; A process that was nominated for a 2009 FIFI Award for ‘Technological Breakthrough of the Year’.

Though space scenting still acts as a most unique and absorbent means in which to enhance a particular event or marketing initiative, most people can’t distinguish the finer notes associated with a brand’s products (in this case, chicken, pork, beef, etc). Our scent solution focused on tapping into the emotional recall triggers of the entire BBQ experience—not necessarily just the taste of BBQ sauce, nor even the smell of charcoal, but the holistic scent experience of BBQ’ing.

Additionally, the scented part of this campaign happened to be a very cost effective tool. To create the custom designed aroma, consulting services, and dry diffused banners—all came in under $10,000; with turnaround time less than 6 weeks. I am aware that most of you reading this didn’t have the opportunity to experience this particular campaign, however I do know you are aware of what this campaign might smell like because each summer across North America, millions of people are engaging their senses at their own BBQs—THE perfect scented space experience!

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