Advertising That Works: Tamagotchi

At BlogHer, I was lucky enough to meet Leslie Galerne-Smith, a Senior Account Executive for The Rogers Group, an LA-based PR firm with some major clients. She shared with me a few case studies of some pretty interesting marketing and PR campaigns for Bandai America, and I wanted to share them with you (look for the second next Monday).

Tamagotchi Family Reunion Sweepstakes
Bandai America, The Rogers Group (the PR agency) and Mr. Youth (the promotions agency), created the Tamagotchi Family Reunion Sweepstakes in support of the new Tamagotchi Connection Familitchi.

The newest version of the virtual pet toy focuses on family and allows kids to raise up to three characters in their Tamagotchi. To reinforce the “More family, more fun” theme, the Sweepstakes encouraged Tamagotchi owners to visit www.tamagenerations.com where they could play games and find family heirlooms.

Collecting 20 Tamagotchi family heirlooms automatically entered the kids in the sweepstakes, which gave away a weekly prize of Family Fun packs of movie passes, theme park tickets, etc. The Grand Prize winner would get their own personal family reunion with the Tamagotchi characters, which included:
- a fully-catered meal for 25
- two Tamagotchi characters to play games
- Tamagotchi Gift Bags for everyone
- games for the party
- professional photographer to chronicle the memories

To promote the “More family, more fun” message, The Rogers Group staged a partnership with www.FamilyReunion.com and Family Tree Magazine’s website. Both sites agreed to cross-linking and cross-promotions.

The efforts of all involved resulted in just under 3,000 sweepstakes entries during its its six-week run (April 3- May 15) and garnered 461,588 print impressions and an estimated online audience of 13,702,113.
The sweepstakes winner, an 8-year old in Newtown, PA enjoyed her very own Tamagotchi Family Reunion on Sunday, July 20 with her siblings, parents and friends.

Here are the things I want you to take away from this case study:

• Heavy giveaways. Tamagotchi gave away not only their products but other prizes like movie and theme park tickets that would entice more people to sign up. If you want anything (like contact info) from people, you’re going to have to give something away.
• Cross promotion. Bandai America worked with other websites and companies to create a stronger link to the contest. Note that they didn’t cross promote with other kids’ products but rather family reunion sites. Nice.
• Huge press. The result was amazing publicity across the board. The contest introduced more people to Tamagotchi, and made more fans for life.