


	IFRA XMA Cross Media Awards 2008 projects





	Company: Metro Associated Newspapers Ltd.
	Project name: The Alert Challenge

	Topical category of the project

	A: Cross media campaigns for individual advertising customers

	General information about the publication

	Metro and Metro.co.uk are read by a loyal demographic of urban-based 18-44 adults in full time employment, and provide clients with a range of innovative, industry-leading advertising solutions.

	Project description

	Lucozade Alert is a new energy drink designed to sharpen mental performance. It gets consumers “back on form” by getting them “switched on”. Metro’s challenge was to create a partnership with GSK to instil these core brand benefits into our readers, and so maximise trial and awareness. The solution also needed to fit in with the overall launch strategy designed by Mediacom.

	The basic idea of the project

	Newspapers traditionally generate mental engagement with games like crosswords. For Lucozade Alert, Metro created the next generation in mental engagement in paper: The Alert Challenge. We challenged our readers to get “switched on” with questions that were fresh and unique, encouraging a mix of lateral thinking, problem solving and creative thinking, all with a quirky sense of fun. These stimulating questions embodied the brand character of Lucozade Alert and got our readers “switched on.”

	Used media channels


	Newspaper		Merchandising

	Online

The implementation

GSK fully embraced this idea and it permeated throughout Mediacom’s launch strategy. GSK’s lucozade.com/alert website became the online home of the Alert Challenge. This website was integrated into Metro’s website appearing between our site’s header and footer. Metro created the questions used in the Alert Challenge, some of which were used in GSK’s wider digital campaign. Daily in-paper activity, including editorially endorsed full pages and fractionals, both posed the questions encouraging readers to answer them at metro.co.uk/alertchallenge and take part in competitions to win cash. We picked winners for the daily and weekly competitions, downloading the players’ details and avatars to publish in the fractionals and full page respectively. Six ‘Brand to Hand’ campaigns put the product into consumers’ hands and the most effective traffic drivers on Metro.co.uk channeled thousands to “switch on” at metro.co.uk/alertchallenge.

Image(s)

MetroUK_The Lucozade Alert Challenge.pdf (1061 KB)

Links

www.metro.co.uk/alertchallenge

Project results

In the first five weeks of the twelve week campaign all adult coverage via Metro was 8.978 million, 486,000 have received a ‘Brand to Hand’ sample, metro.co.uk/alertchallenge has received over 43,000 visits, and the GSK consumer database has been boosted by over 6,400 registrants.