A NASA astronaut, musician, chef and others don water polo caps in new advertising that USA Water Polo Inc. hopes will generate awareness about the sport and its athletes.
The Huntington Beach-based nonprofit is the national governing body for the sport. It’s responsible for marketing all of the national teams and drawing sponsors to provide athletes with outfits, equipment and even services such as accounting.
The goal of the cap campaign, which launches today, is two-fold.
“We’re looking to generate overall awareness of water polo and we’re looking to create grassroots excitement within the sport itself,” said Chief Marketing Officer Jennifer Rottenberg.
The ad campaign includes print advertisements, online banner ads, a dedicated website, Facebook promotions and YouTube video posts.
The ads feature images of 11 distinguished professionals who at one time or another played water polo.
The tag line “I am water polo” appears on each ad along with a brief description of each person.
“There’s a whole range of folks in the ads that are excelling in different ways (professionally),” Rottenberg said. “The idea is that all those skills you learned playing water polo—discipline, commitment and teamwork—can help you get anywhere.”
Photo shoot outtakes and interviews with the photo subjects will be posted on USA Water Polo’s YouTube channel.
All of the ads will be posted on IAmWaterPolo.org this week rather than a staggered timeline tied to the publications or websites where they will eventually appear.
The ads also will be posted on Facebook, where friends of USA Water Polo are being invited to snap pictures of themselves wearing a water polo cap with their own versions of the campaign images. They’ll all be able to vote in a monthly contest on what image they like best. Winners will be recognized in USA Water Polo’s quarterly magazine.
The campaign is expected to run through next year.
If this initial set of ads goes over well, USA Water Polo may recruit additional volunteers for a second version of the campaign, Rottenberg said.
“We’re hopeful that the water polo community is going to get what we’re trying to do with this and participate in the grass roots component to help create positive energy within the sport,” she said.
OCVarsity App
The Orange County Register is banking on its strong high school sports following with a spruced-up version of its OCVarsity application for smartphones.
The new app comes in time for the fall sports season as the Register looks to attract readers among high school athletes, fans and their parents. It’s available for free in Apple Inc.’s iTunes store.
The Register is the largest of 100 or so newspapers owned by Irvine-based Freedom Communications Inc.
The OCVarsity app and a separate app for the iPad is part of a bigger push by the Register to increase its digital offerings as readers’ tastes continue to shift toward more mobile access to news and other information.
The latest version of the app features a new design with videos and photos.
The revised OCVarsity app provides users with live feeds on scores and other updates for teams throughout Orange County.
Users will also be able to share what they find on OCVarsity with their friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter.
The initial OCVarsity app debuted last September. It has so far accounted for 10% of views on ocvarsity.com.
Appeal to a younger readership may also be aided by Tough Knocks, a new online video series the Register is offering.
The series will be available through its iPad app and follows the Santa Margarita High and La Habra High football teams throughout their seasons.
Three- to five-minute clips will be released on Tuesdays and will run through the mid-December playoff season.
Dacor’s Online Launch
Costa Mesa-based high-end kitchen appliance maker Dacor Inc. is holding a Facebook sweepstakes to drum up awareness of its latest cooktop, the Distinctive series 30-inch stove.
The product launch for the cooktop is part of a transition Dacor has made in recent years from traditional literature kits distributed to dealers.
Dacor manufactures its appliances in the City of Industry and has about $200 million in sales annually.
The 30-inch cooktop costs $1,049.
The company’s customers were invited to participate in the Distinctive sweepstakes through a mass email.
“We’ve made great progress over the past four years, where we went through a complete transition from a very traditional way of launching new products to an online launch that reaches consumers,” President Steve Joseph said. “E-marketing is really the primary focus of our product launches now.”
More traditional advertising also will be used to market the cooktop.
Print ads are in several national interior design and decorating trade publications, including New York-based Hearst Corp.’s Veranda and House Beautiful.
“We find those are great places for women who are thinking about a remodel to get ideas for their new kitchen,” Joseph said.
The ads include quick response codes allowing customers to go straight from the ad to Dacor’s website on a mobile phone.
