I’m not much of a foodie, but I love to listen to the three Andelman brothers of Phantom Gourmet banter on their weekly radio show here in Boston. My friend and colleague Joanna MacDonald is an even bigger fan and shares my wife’s love for their weekly food and dining show on TV38. The show is really a riot and, of course, they review some great places to eat in Greater Boston.

Another pot simmering on the Phantom Gourmet stove of success is their annual BBQ Beach Party. While we have our hands full with our own events during the year, we’re always looking for other venues we can tap to sell through to cause marketing partners and Phantom’s BBQ Beach Party is a great opportunity. 

• The Andelmans run a well established, successful event with a huge crowd.
• The BBQ Beach Party is large enough to sustain a month-long cause marketing campaign.
• Phantom Gourmet had several great promotional vehicles, including popular TV and radio shows and web site.

Dave Andelman, Founder of Phantom Gourmet, was very receptive when we met with him, and even accepted an invite from Sal Perisano, the President of iParty, to join him for a tour of the hospital. Dave liked the idea of helping a great cause–in this case the food pantry at BMC–while retail partners help him promote his BBQ event at the register with pinups that offer 50% off one ticket to the BBQ.

On our end, we took the exposure Phantom could offer partners on their radio and TV shows and web site and recruited these partners for the program, which will run May 23rd to June 27th.

iParty. iParty already does a late spring pinup program for us so we rolled their annual effort into the Phantom campaign so the party retailer would benefit from the extra promotion from the event and cross-promotion from other retailers.

Total stores involved: 50. Foot traffic: Good. Here’s an interesting factoid: after Halloween, graduation season is their second busiest time of year.

Ocean State Job Lots. Up to this year, Ocean State always did one pinup program for us in December, but being fans of both the hospital and Phantom Gourmet they agreed to a second pinup program!

Total stores involved: 89. Foot traffic: Good. Not as busy as December when they do their main pinup program for us, but with consumers looking for savings, a discount retailer like OSJL right now is a very popular destination.

The Upper Crust. A longtime partner of Phantom Gourmet, the Andelmans recruited them to sell the pinup.

Total locations involved: 15. Foot traffic: Fair. They do a lot of takeout and it’s unclear if takeout patrons will be asked to buy a mobile.

Tedeschi Food Shops. There’s a great story behind Tedeschi coming aboard as a sponsor! We’ve been working on them as a prospect for five years, and finally, thanks to the help of a board member, and a great offering from Phantom Gourmet, we’ll do our first cause marketing program with them this month.

Total stores involved: 188. Foot traffic: Good. Convenience stores are busy places so the quick turnaround at the register doesn’t give the register clerk a lot time to interact with customers. In short, pinups can be a harder sell. But all those locations!

That brings the total number of retail locations participating in our latest cause marketing program to 342!  If the key to cause marketing point-of-sale success really is lots of locations and foot traffic, this program should be a winner!

Labor Day means a lot of things to people: end of summer, back to school and down to business at the office!  On my team for four years now Labor Day has meant just one thing: Halloween Town is right around the corner!

Halloween Town is our biggest cause marketing event of the year, which we could never accomplish without our longtime partner iParty.  I’ve blogged about it quite a bit. You can catch up on past posts by searching on “Halloween Town” in the upper right corner or by searching in “Cause Marketer’s Journal” on the right sidebar.  You can also check out a brief promotional video here.

The skinny on the event for you newbies is that it’s a huge two-day Halloween party for kids ten and under at Boston’s Seaport World Trade Center, which is a 70,000 square foot facility.  Last year’s event attracted 13,000 people.  The cause marketing connection comes from the many companies, mainly retailers, that participate in the event in two important ways.

First, leading up to the event retailers sell Halloween Town mobiles in their stores to raise money for our cause and to promote the event.  Second, they participate in the event by having their own Halloween-themed zone where they can promote their brand and connect with families.  A local supermarket chain, for instance, shipped in 10,000 pumpkins last year for kids to decorate and then have their picture taken by the retailer’s antique delivery truck.

This year’s event will have many of the same ingredients that have made previous years such a big success.  But with a challenging economy and our own ambitious goal to dramatically increase the money we net from the event, here are of the some of the areas we’ve focused on and invested in so we can make more money.

More partners, but fewer mobile partners.  Retailers are struggling so it’s no surprise that we have fewer point-of-sale partners than last year.  It’s too bad, because as I’ve written before, these programs are efficient, effective and lucrative.  To make up for the shortfall, the sales team here has focused on smaller sponsorships of $5,000 or less.  Because Halloween Town has grown so dramatically the past few years and the demographic is so desirable (the four-eyed, four-legged monster, as we like to call it: mothers with kids) we actually have been able to attract a number of good companies in search of sampling and marketing opportunities.  To date, sponsorship revenues are up over 30 percent compared to last year.  And since these marketing partnerships are turnkey, there’s a good chance we’ll close several more before over the next several weeks.  These smaller sponsorships don’t totally make up for the loss of mobile partners–one of which was worth nearly $100k–but they do help.

Maximizing the mobiles partners we do have.  For those excellent mobile partners we do have, we’re spending more time figuring out how we can maximize the money they raise for us in their stores.  Regardless of how successful the program is, compliance is always a challenge.  Not every register clerk is asking that all-important question: “Do you want to donate a dollar to help a sick child?”.  To increase employee participation in the program, we’ve reviewed our incentive program to make sure that it motivates employees to participate.  We’ve scheduled more kick-offs at area stores so that we can educate employees about the mission of our organization and to thank them in person for their efforts.  Perhaps, most importantly, we plan to work more closely with store managers to give them the tools and support they need to ensure the success of the program in their stores.  

Drive traffic with premium entertainment.  One thing we learned from past Halloween Towns is that people will really turn out for celebrities and quality entertainment.  We saw it two years ago when adoring young mothers came out to see Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and the following year when tweens came out to hear local pop group Girl Authority.  Both of these acts came at no cost to us, but this year we decided to invest in entertainment that we hope will drive traffic to the gate.  We chose musician Dan Zanes for several reasons.  He’s well known to the kid demo thanks to appearances on Disney and Noggin.  He’s also a New England native who sold out all of his New England appearances last year.  Finally, Dan is a good fit for our organization.  He truly cares about the underserved, immigrant population we serve and has released a CD in Spanish.  While Halloween Town has always attracted a great crowd–attendance last year was up 30 percent from the year before–the World Trade Center at which it is held is a huge facility and can accommodate many, many more people and we want to take full advantage of that.  We think Dan is an entertainer that can help us pack the house.

Charging for things that use to be free.  For the past couple years of Halloween Town we’ve taken special note of those activities that were always really popular with visitors.  The line for laser tag was always out the door.  Kids and parents alike loved the really fancy face painting that can make a three year old look like a cat or lion.  And we use to give these things away!  People paid one admission price and just about everything inside was free.  This year we’ll experiment with charging for some activities in hopes of raising more money (face painting) and to helping with crowd control (laser tag).  The result should be a better, more successful event.