Feature: Red Nose Day

Sales promotions have come on leaps and bounds in recent years with the dawning of some truly amazing technology. But it’s nice to see that some of the good old fashioned promotions are still used by good old fashioned Red Nose Day. Free gifts and bonkers promotions (Walkears, anyone?) are rife at his time of year and it’s great to have an excuse to be enormously silly in the name of charidee.

I don’t believe there’s a person in the UK who has never bought a red nose (if you haven’t, shame on you!) and I challenge anyone to sit through half an hour of Lenny Henry’s heartbreaking reports on poverty without reaching for the phone to donate just a small portion of your wages to the cause.

So, in the spirit of giving, have a look at these promotions, pick your favourites and start supporting!

Ol’ Red

This year, the legendary Red Nose is back, and the team behind it, Logistix, have made sure it’s a good one. This year’s Red Nose Day theme is “The Big One” and, in keeping with this, the Nose gets significantly bigger when removed from its box. It’s made from a bright red sponge and comes with free stickers to personalise your nose (or you can run around squealing slapping them to random foreheads – it’s RND so they can’t complain) and a free Chocpix which reveals a 3D image when held up to the light.

There’s quite a family behind the Nose this year: Kinnertons is in charge of producing the Fairtrade, nut-free chocolates, Wrapid is doing the packing and Watermark is in charge of making the Nose, the box and the stickers.

The Nose costs just £1 and is available at Sainsbury’s and Oxfam until Red Nose Day (16th March). 60p of that pound will go straight to Comic Relief.

Cheers big ears!

One of my favourite adverts at the moment is for walkEARS. It sees Stephen Fry taking the register in a star-studded classroom. Girls Aloud, Billie Piper and Russell Brand are amongst the celebs shouting ‘Ear!’ and sporting Walker’s big, red plastic ears. The only one not wearing them is Gary Lineker who gets pounced on by Fry for wearing ‘ridiculous promotional ears’. Ah it’s a rib-tickler.

Walkers general manager Neil Campbell said: “We are proud to be supporting Comic Relief again for Red Nose Day 2007. It is a fantastic and unique opportunity for people to have fun and at the same time raise money to help people across the UK and Africa.”

Those generous people at Walkers are giving away their walkEARS for free at www.walkears.com (where you can also view the advert and some outtakes) but we are encouraged to make a donation to Comic Relief after ordering.

And it’d take a heart of stone to grab your free ears and run, now wouldn’t it?

Maxx power

TK Maxx is great isn’t it? Where else can you get a pair of designer jeans for £11? And rummage for three hours without getting bored? And they’re keeping up appearances again this year with their Red Nose Day t-shirt range. There are enough designs and sizes to fit anyone’s criteria and the baby bodysuit is so sweet it’s got to be fattening.

The most cash you’ll have to part with is £12.99 and all of the profit will be going straight to Comic Relief. The sale of just two adult t-shirts will pay for a medical kit that a community carer uses to look after those who are ill with HIV or AIDS in Africa. So you can look good and feel great.

Sales of the shirts have managed to raise more than a million pounds in previous years and TK Maxx are hoping to do even better this year.

Visit www.tkmaxx.com to check out the t-shirts. You can’t order online unfortunately, but there’s a good store locater.

Good things in a small package

Jamie Oliver has created the Little Book of BIG Treats to support this year’s Red Nose Day. The book contains 12 recipes for cakes, brownies, flapjacks and more. The recipes are perfect for making in huge quantities which can be sold on at a bake sale to raise cash for the cause.

The man himself says: “Get cooking this Red Nose Day and together we stand to make a few quid. Every single penny from the sales of this book will go to help some of the poorest people here in the UK and in Africa. The book may be small but if you treat it right it really can make a big, big difference.”

You can pick up a copy of the book for £3 in good book shops or you could order your copy at www.rednoseday.com. All three of your pounds will go straight to Comic Relief.

Let it out

Both Andrex and Kleenex are getting very involved in Red Nose Day this year. Handy really seeing as Comic Relief can often be quite a tearful event. Kimberly-Clark aims to raise £500,000 with their on-pack promotions.

Andrex have produced a special Comic Relief pooch that sports a red nose and an official Red Nose Day t-shirt. Consumers can get heir hands on one for £5 sent in with a voucher that can be found on promotional packs.

Kleenex are going down the ‘text to win’ route offering the chance to become a VI guest of Comic Relief on the big day itself. As part of the promotion, Kleenex is also giving away thousands of blow-up red nose seats.

Troy Warfield, UK General Manager, Kimberly-Clark said: “Red Nose Day presents a fantastic opportunity for two of Britain’s best loved brands to use their influence in a hugely positive way. Working with our retail partners and driving consumers into stores is essential to the success of the fundraising effort and our TV advertising campaigns and PR support will be directed at this challenge.”

Emma Leech, Kleenex Brand Manager, said: “Comic Relief does incredible work here in the UK and Africa so we are really proud to be involved.

“Comic Relief also fits with our new Let It Out campaign encouraging people to let it out both physically and emotionally whether through laughter, tears or just a good blow of your nose.”

Red Tamba

TAMBA Internet, award winners in creating infectious viral games, was one of the companies to take Comic Relief up on their Digital Challenge. Viral games are extremely successful in creating brand awareness and data capture for brand owners.

This year, Comic Relief wanted to see how much companies could help to “Spread the Red” by using viral technologies.

TAMBA responded by adapting one of their existing games, Pop, to create Red Lead. Players have to safely guide the red noses across the screen avoiding the sharp pencils set out to pop them. After you’ve finished playing, you’re given the chance to make a donation.

So far the game has achieved over 130,000 plays and Comic Relief report over 28,000 clickthroughs to their donations page. Statistics provided by MemeCounter also show the game has a 48% returning player rate.

“Whilst the game is designed to be fun and addictive to play, it does have some important tasks to do,” said Kay Hammond, MD of TAMBA Internet. “It encourages players to donate from the game screen, and also promotes the date of this years Red Nose Day – Friday 16th March.”

Go to www.tamba.co.uk/rednoseday07/ to have a go.

Speedy Relief

Another company to take up Comic Relief on this challenge was Inbox Digital.

They’ve created ‘Speedy Relief’, a car game that quite frankly will drive you to distraction. Trying to get your noses from one end of the track to the other is seemingly impossible unless you drive painfully slowly. But this is the brilliance – you won’t stop until you get the job done.

The game is well designed and well supported. After an unexpected plug from Radio 1’s Chris Moyles, a surge of his eight million listeners turned up to have a go at the game. After the show, the game was played an amazing two million times within a few hours. Four days later this number had risen to ten million.

Oli Christie, Creative Director of Inbox Digital said: “We're chuffed that we got chosen as one of the best ideas from 30 entries and hope that Speedy Relief comes first in the viral challenge. The mention from fatty Moyles was a great boost for the game and gave Speedy Relief the platform it needed to go truly viral.”

You can play the game at www.speedyrelief.com