ISSUE 7 JANUARY 2008 JANUARY FOCUS: EVENT MARKETING The New Year is the perfect time to set your sights on the upcoming year. 2008 budgets are in place, but now the real challenge emerges—taking those budgets and doing something new, different and affordable. Event marketing serves as a great way for businesses to reach out to targeted consumer groups and introduce products or services in a casual, more personal environment. But ensuring that consumers remember the product, service or brand long after the event ends is critical to success. That’s where digital entertainment comes into play. Music download and cell phone entertainment cards make ideal event giveaways because they are inexpensive to deliver, easy to transport and come customized with your client’s name and logo, serving as a mini-billboard for potential customers. And because consumers must go online to redeem the content, digital entertainment cards are a powerful way to drive web traffic and capture valuable customer information for ongoing marketing. The best part of all is that digital entertainment transcends demographics, making it a perfect giveaway for any event. Whether your client is an automaker looking to build buzz around a new car, a coffee company interested in testing the reception of a new drink, or an athletic shoe manufacturer hoping to connect with high school and college athletes, digital entertainment promotions offer the solution they need. PROMOTION SPOTLIGHT Pioneer had just introduced a new GPS in-car accessory and wanted an effective, low cost giveaway that would attract people to its exhibition tents at numerous nationwide summer events to demo its GPS system. The solution? Music download cards. The promotion, advertised through radio, newspaper and on-site event signage, offered people who stopped by the exhibition tents a free music download card featuring a mystery PIN good for 1, 2, or 5 music downloads. To find out how many songs they had received, attendees were first required to go online and complete a survey that linked back to Pioneer’s corporate Web site. The music download giveaways were a big success for Pioneer, providing the company with a powerful incentive that generated significant traffic to the exhibition tents and was easy and inexpensive to ship to the numerous event locations. Best of all, the giveaway enabled Pioneer to drive consumers to its corporate Web site to reinforce its GPS products, and to capture valuable consumer data for ongoing marketing efforts NEWS YOU CAN USE: SPRING BREAK MARKETING SOARS Wondering about the marketing power of spring break? According to a recent study by Alloy Media and Marketing, the college market represents more than $175 billion in consumer spending each year – driving marketers to spend upwards of $100 million to connect with college students at spring break events. Brands are all scrambling to make a lasting impression with this key consumer group, meaning huge opportunities for savvy promotional distributors who understand the multi-pronged power of digital entertainment promotions. "Brands are looking for ways to connect with college students in nontraditional ways, and spring break is a convenient way to reach a large mass of students, " notes Gary Colen, executive vice president of Alloy Media and Marketing. "Spring break has always been a cornerstone opportunity for marketers to reach college students.  Because they are hard to reach, marketers have to reach outside traditional tactics to reach them." With music downloads and cell phone entertainment ranking at the top of must-have lists for college students, digital entertainment promotions are a shoe-in for any brand or business interested in reaching this market sector.  From an incentive perspective,  digital entertainment addresses two key factors that are imperative to college students: instant access and personalization.		WE'RE COMING Featured below are the trade shows we will be exhibiting at over the next couple of months. Please stop by our booth for a visit and contact us if you would like to schedule a private meeting. Jan. 4 -5, 2008 ASI Orlando Booth 1323 Jan. 16 – 18, 2008 PPAI Expo Las Vegas Booth 6328 Jan. 28 – 29, 2008 PPAC Toronto Feb. 7 - 8, 2008 ASI Dallas Booth 1806 Stop, Learn, Win!  All attendees who stop at the CFS booth will receive a music download card with a chance to win 1000 FREE songs.