Recently on the AAN Marketing listserv, NOW’s Brian Francis described a promotion the paper had been running, combining a street-presence marketing promotion with an online ballot.

I like this idea because it’s on-brand and multi-faceted; promoting local artists and businesses, raising street-awareness of the publication, and directing traffic to the website to vote for a winning box.

Francis reports:

“We’ve been running an artist-related promo this summer in Toronto called NOW’s Box Design Challenge. We asked local artists to submit a design, using the NOW box as their canvas. Ten finalists were chosen, the boxes were created and are currently on display at various locations throughout the city.

A jury will decide a Grand Prize winner and readers can also pick their favourite by voting online.

It’s been a very successful and cost-effective promo. NOW paid for the boxes and did trade on $100 gift certificates to use at an arts supply store.

We did a different promo last year — the Fashion Design Challenge. Ten finalists made clothing out of NOW newsprint which went on display at various fashion stores. It was great promo, as well.

You can check out (and vote!) for the boxes at NOWToronto.com/challenge.”

PHYSICAL

Each box has a sign affixed onto it, giving the name of the design/artist and the URL so folks could vote on their favorite. There are 10 at local businesses, galleries and museums. [See one in the wild, below.]

PRINT

NOW is running full-page ads, giving contest details, with artist photos.

ONLINE

NOW runs a teaser ad on the homepage, which leads to the ballot form at NOWToronto.com/challenge.

Winners will be announced in August, and the artists will have the option of keeping the boxes. “If someone opts not to,” says NOW’s Francis, ” I’ll find good homes for them.

Have a multi-faceted online promotion you’d like to share?

Tell us about it in the comments. If you’d like it featured, email me at laurafries [at] aan [dot] org.