Challenge:

 

Car sales were flat and sales staff was unmotivated. Cadillac wanted a weekly promotion that kept the sales team interested and competitive. They decided on a Monday Night Football tie-in.

 

Each week, for every car you sold, you would get to pick a team in the Monday Night game. If you sold 7 cars you got 7 picks. You could put 4 on Chicago Bears to win and 3 on the Minnesota Vikings.

 

There was money in the pot each week for whoever picked the winning team and it was split between those who chose correctly. So upsets paid off big, since less people were betting on them. Good promotion idea, but there was a catch...they didn’t have a large budget for creative.

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They wanted a promotional poster to put up in all the show rooms and that was it. Just like the year before and the year before that...

Solution:
 

The NFL usage fees for the team logos was not a financial option. Years ago, football card companies could not reach a settlement with the NFL on team logos. All cards that year had helmets with no logos.

 

So instead of an expected poster and low dealership interest, my idea was to create a pack of football cards for each sales team member that had each Monday night game on individual cards.

 

Using stock football game images, I color corrected jersey and helmets to match the pro team colors. But NO logos! The sales team loved the cards (which had a mini-poster inside to record their picks).

Results:
 

Participation was at an all time high and car sales increased. Stories circulated of big wins, one being a sales associate having sold 9 cars, put all his picks on the upset, He walked off with a huge cash payout.

 

The client process was to rate the idea (1-10, 10 being complete satisfaction) and rate the results after promotion ended.

 

It was the first time they'd ever given out 10’s for both.