P&G is loving the results of its dumpcupid.com promo
Having concluded that few consumers are passionate enough about their shampoo to spend much time on shampoo web sites, Procter & Gamble tried a novel approach to marketing its Herbal Essences shampoo line to its target audience of women aged 18 to 24. In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, the consumer products manufacturer maintained a web site called dumpcupid.com that featured three humorous videos portraying Cupid as a chunky, aging frat boy type—and inserted marketing messages for its shampoo.
P&G was “delighted with the results,” Chris Keith, associate marketing director for Herbal Essences, told attendees this week at the ad:tech conference in Chicago. He said dumpcupid.com attracted more visitors in the weeks leading up to the hearts-and-flowers holiday than P&G’s most popular site, Pampers.com. In fact, dumpcupid.com accounted for .00175% of all U.S. web site visits in February, ahead of Pampers.com’s .0009% rating and more than 10 times the .00013% recorded by HerbalEssences.com, according to web traffic measurement firm Hitwise.
And while the dumpcupid.com site has been taken down, the decidedly unromantic videos live on. The videos, including one in which Cupid is attacked by a woman irate over his fixing her up with a married man, have been viewed 1.5 million times on YouTube, Keith says.
P&G drove traffic to the site through advertising, including using such offline media as television, billboards and print. Some of the offline advertising mentioned no brand, as a way to pique consumers’ interest. The ads did highlight the $25,000 shopping spree that was being given away at dumpcupid.com.
Keith says P&G plans a similar promotion in the coming year, but one more geared to its target audience of young women. “The humor was more college humor than feminine humor,” he says. “We’ll try to do something more feminine.”
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