Coca-Cola's "Buy A Player" Promotion: Ways for Clubs to Promote the Competition

-
The background rules and suggestions for the Coca Cola "Buy A Player"

COCA-COLA LAUNCHES ‘BUY A PLAYER’ PROMOTION
£10 Million prize fund up for grabs in Coca-Cola’s biggest ever football promotion
16th January 2007: Coca-Cola today gives ... fans the fantastic opportunity to increase their club’s transfer fund by launching a brand new on-pack promotion called ‘Buy A Player’. With a £10M prize fund on offer, and one in every two packs guaranteed to win, Coca-Cola is hoping ...fans get behind their team and start racking up their transfer fund.
From today, anyone buying a promotional bottle or multipack of Coca-Cola or Coke Zero will be in with a chance of winning a prize for ...transfer fund. Prizes range from 50p all the way up to £100,000. The winners of the £100,000 prizes will also win a personal cash prize of £10,000.
Fans need to simply text in the unique code found on promotional bottles or multipacks to 80094 or enter it at www.coca-cola.co.uk/football. Upon entering, ...fans will find out instantly if they are winners of money for their club.
Everyone entering the Buy A Player promotion up until February 7th will also be automatically entered into a separate draw for £250,000. The winner will be announced live on Soccer AM on Saturday 10th February 2007.
Steve Cumming, Sponsorship Manager, Coca-Cola Great Britain said: “Buy A Player is our biggest football promotion to date and is set to strengthen our already highly credible association with football. ‘Win A Player’ was hugely successful but we have tried to make the ‘Buy a Player’ promotion bigger, better & even more exciting for football fans.”
The launch of ‘Buy A Player’ follows on from two successful years of the Coca-Cola Win A Player promotion, which received over three million entries and saw fans from two South Coast clubs – Brighton and Southampton – win £250,000 for their respective clubs transfer kitties in 2005 and 2006.
Last year ‘Win A Player’ gave one main prize of £250K to Southampton fan Chantelle Legg, and two further prizes of £50K to Brentford fan Steven Hearn and Oxford fan Andy Perrin. This year’s promotion will ensure that [INSERT CLUB] fans are now in with a chance to win something for their club.....

Coca-Cola ‘Buy a Player’ Promotion – How you can get involved.
Introduction
Coke are offering your fans the chance to boost your transfer fund with £10 million worth of prizes in their ‘Buy A Player’ promotion. To support QPR and get as much money for you as possible, everyone at your club should get behind this initiative – and who better to lead this than your chairman!
(If you feel that your manager may be more willing to do all these tasks listed below, then that would also be fine).
The Creative Idea for the advertising
We’d like your chairman to persuade your fans to buy bottles of Coke or Coke Zero in order to boost your ‘Buy A Player’ transfer fund. Your fans will earn you all this money to spend on new transfer targets next season, so we think it’s only fair that the club give something back. We’d therefore like your chairman to make the fans a promise, something that they are prepared to do if the fans earn you a certain amount in the promotion. We’ll then communicate the chairman’s promise across a wide range of media from internet advertising on your own website, to local radio commercials in your area, to programme print adverts and possibly even viral email films.
Step 1 – Making Your Promise
To begin with we’d simply like the chairman to come up with a promise or pledge and send it over to us - the funnier and more entertaining the better. We’ve written a few examples below. Feel free to adopt or adapt any.
Examples you could use:- I promise to let a fan shave my head on the pitch at half time in the first home game of next season if we earn over £100,000 in the Coca-Cola ‘Buy A Player’ promotion
- I promise to give the fan who wins the most money for our club in the Coca-Cola ‘Buy A Player’ promotion my car parking space next season.
- I promise to sky dive into the centre circle of the first home game of next season if we earn over £100,000 in the Coca-Cola ‘Buy A Player’ promotion
- I promise to sing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ by Celine Dion in the centre circle of the first home game of next season if we earn over £100,000 in the Coca-Cola ‘Buy A Player’ promotion
- I promise that I’ll paint my car in the colours of the team kit if we earn over £100,000 in the Coca-Cola ‘Buy A Player’ promotion.
- I promise that I’ll work in one of the burger vans outside the ground before the first home game next season if we win over £100,000 in the Coca-Cola ‘Buy A Player’ promotion.
- I promise I’ll perform part of Swan Lake in the centre circle if we win over £100,000 in Coca-Cola ‘Buy A Player’ promotion.
When you’ve decided what your promise is, please email it over to us at:
jonathani@karen-earl.co.uk
The idea will be used in the radio & internet advertising. We would be grateful if you could do this before Xmas.

Step 2 – Recording Your Promise
We’d then like your chairman to record your ‘Promise’ and feature in our radio campaign fronted by Chris Kamara. It’s really easy to get involved, all you need to do is ring 08712 001 007 (standard BT rate) and leave us a message quoting your name and club and then read out your promise. ..
This line will be ready to use from December 5th.
Just a few things to bear in mind before recording;
- Please ring from a landline and speak clearly.
- Try keeping your quote under 15 seconds.
- And avoid swearing!
Other than that just follow the prompts on the phone line, record your message and we’ll do the rest.
Once again, we would be grateful if you could do this before Xmas.

Step 3 – Press Launch
In order to launch the campaign with your local media in early January, we would like to use your manager. Ideally, we would like him to have his photo taken in local newsagent near your ground, buying a promotional pack of Coke. The idea is that we will send a photographer to your ground – we probably need about half an hour of his time before Xmas.
We will do the rest – we will supply the shots to you & also to the media in & around your area on the day of the launch in mid Janaury.
Once you know the availability of your manager, please contact & we’ll arrange the rest:
jonathani@karen-earl.co.uk

Step 4 – Superfan Prizes
Over the course of the promotion you will of course want your fans to enter as many times as possible to raise as much money as possible for your transfer fund.
As part of the Coke promotional website, we have built in a ‘Superfan’ zone for each club. This will highlight which of your fans have raised the most amount of money for your club and ultimately be crowned ‘Superfan’ at the end of the promotion.

To incentivise your fans even more, we would like to offer them a ‘money can’t buy club experience’ as a prize. Ideas already suggested by clubs range from:

• Being given a squad number for the 07/08 season
• Being in the team photo at the start of next season
• Riding with the team on the bus to a match
• Sitting next to the manager on the bench for a home game
Please can you let us know by Xmas, what prize you might be able to offer your fans. Please feel free to offer something else of a similar level if the above ideas aren’t appropriate!..

Step 5 – Filming Your Promise
Now we know we’re pushing our luck here, but to get as much publicity for your ‘Buy A Player’ cause we’d love you to film your chairman making his ‘Promise’. We’ve made space available on the Coke website for your film. All you need to do is find a way of filming it.
Nowadays digital cameras have great ‘video capture’ features and even some of the more recent mobile phones can double as good quality video cameras, so you don’t have to worry about going out hiring Spielberg or a film crew.
Again, the funnier and more entertaining the better – so, for example, if you’re promising to shave your head why not film it in a barber’s; if you promise to work in grounds burger vans, film it whilst flipping burgers. Just think what your fans would love to see you doing.
At the bottom of this document, we have listed some ideas to help you out!
We would be grateful if you could try to do this by mid January. Coke will then pay for all the costs of sending this email film to all your fans.
Your film can be emailed to: Buyaplayer@bd-ntwk.com

Summary
We hope all this all makes sense. We really appreciate any help that you can provide to help boost your transfer fund.
If you’ve any further queries please get in touch with the key contact listed throughout this document.

IDEAS FOR VIRAL FILMS

- A chairman talks to camera about the promotion we pull out to reveal he’s leaving a Newsagent in a fork lift truck with crates of Coke on the front

- A chairman talks to camera about the promotion then puts a balaclava on and holds up a Coke delivery truck.

- A chairman sits in his office talking about the promotion surrounded by hundreds of empty bottles of coke.

- A chairman attempts to park a Coke delivery truck in his ‘official’ parking space.

- A chairman promises to shave his beard off

- A chairman wearing a bald wig promises to shave his hair off

- A chairman promises to have a full body wax in the centre circle at the first home game of next season

- A chairman holds aloft a pink tutu with a name and number on the back and threatens to install it as next seasons away kit if ‘we’ don’t get over £100,000.

- We watch a chairman painting seats in the main stand and pull out to reveal he’s painted BUY MORE COKE in the club colours.

- A chairman wears a ‘Coke Suit’ (a huge bottle of coke) and hands out bottles outside of the ground

- A chairman in the ‘Coke Suit’ runs from one side of the training pitch to the other as his team fire balls at him from all angles. He promises to give fans a go if they win over £500,000.

- On the training pitch the manager has insisted on swapping all the usual training aids (Fake Wall, cones, goal posts) for Coke bottle ones. We see the players curling balls and running around them.

- A chairman gives us a guided tour of the corporate facilities and shows us the best seats in the house. He promises all this for the person who wins ‘us’ the most.

- A chairman simply cries in his office begging the fans to buy more coke and enter the competition.

- A chairman sits in his office and apologises for all the transfer mistakes he’s made in the past and promises to make up for all of them if they can just get enough in the competition.

- A chairman sits in his office with all the clubs major trophies on his desk and threatens to melt them down if they don’t get enough in the competition.

- A chairman dressed in coke regalia walks the streets around his ground pushing a Coca-Cola trolley handing out Coke cans to fans. He refuses to give any to any other supporter.

- A chairman stands outside a newsagent asking supporters who their team is then dragging those, who support his, inside (“You In”)

- A chairman acts like a shelve stacker in a newsagent filling the fridge with coke on demand.

- A chairman puts the last bottle on top of an amazing coke pyramid standing in the middle of a newsagent floor.

- A chairman stands out in the cold holding a Golf Sale-style sign pointing towards the NEAREST COKE STORE


QPR OFFICIAL SITE - January 17, 2007
CHAIRMAN'S PLEDGE

How our Chairman might look

Gianni Paladini has made a pledge to QPR fans everywhere if they help him to buy a player for the club with the new Coca Cola promotion.

The Rangers Chairman has promised to dye his hair blue and white if Superhoops fans raise £25,000 for the Buy a Player transfer kitty.

Every time you buy a bottle or multipack of Coca Cola products, you stand a chance of winning a prize from anything between 50p and £100,000.

It may sound like a tough task, but if someone scoops the £100,000 prize within the first day, Paladini will be in trouble!

However, his tresses will be the last of his worries should he suddenly have £100,000 available to spend on a new player, and you of will of course claim £10,000 for yourself.

Of course you don't need to be a big winner; fan power is all that's needed here to have Paladini reaching for the hair dye.

The more entries QPR fans make into the competition, the greater the chances you have of racking up the cash for your club.

Our Superfan, the supporter who makes the most for QPR, will also be given the use of an Executive Box for the duration of next season.

So what are you waiting for? Start entering TODAY! QPR


QPR OFFICIAL SITE - Janaury 16, 2007 "Buy A Player"
Gaffer John Gregory attempts to 'Buy a Player'

Coca-Cola today gives QPR fans the fantastic opportunity to increase their club's transfer fund by launching a brand new on-pack promotion called 'Buy A Player'.

With a £10M prize fund on offer and one in every two packs guaranteed to win, Coca-Cola is hoping QPR fans get behind their team and start racking up their transfer fund.

From today, anyone buying a promotional bottle or multipack of Coca-Cola or Coke Zero will be in with a chance of winning a prize for QPR transfer fund.

Prizes range from 50p all the way up to £100,000. The winners of the £100,000 prizes will also win a personal cash prize of £10,000.

Fans need to simply text in the unique code found on promotional bottles or multipacks to 80094 or enter it at www.coca-cola.co.uk/football.

Upon entering, QPR fans will find out instantly if they are winners of money for their club.

Everyone entering the Buy A Player promotion up until February 7 will also be automatically entered into a separate draw for £250,000. The winner will be announced live on Soccer AM on Saturday February 10, 2007.

Steve Cumming, Sponsorship Manager, Coca-Cola Great Britain said: "Buy A Player is our biggest football promotion to date and is set to strengthen our already highly credible association with football.

'Win A Player' was hugely successful but we have tried to make the 'Buy a Player' promotion bigger, better & even more exciting for football fans."

The launch of 'Buy A Player' follows on from two successful years of the Coca-Cola Win A Player promotion, which received over three million entries and saw fans from two South Coast clubs - Brighton and Southampton - win £250,000 for their respective clubs transfer kitties in 2005 and 2006.

Last year 'Win A Player' gave one main prize of £250K to Southampton fan Chantelle Legg, and two further prizes of £50K to Brentford fan Steven Hearn and Oxford fan Andy Perrin. This year's promotion will ensure that QPR fans are now in with a chance to win something for their club. QPR