Roche, the makers of Sanatogen ProNatal(R), have signed a three-month exclusive five-figure deal through MediaCom with Freeserve’s advertising sales team to promote, through interactivity, the new Sanatogen ProNatal website (www.pronatal.co.uk) and to ultimately drive sales in-store.
The Sanatogen ProNatal website gives users access to pregnancy information and promotes Sanatogen ProNatal, a comprehensive Folic Acid, multivitamin and multimineral supplement specially created for women before, during and after pregnancy. For this campaign, Freeserve has designed a microsite and hosted it within the Freeserve portal. It can be accessed through buttons on the icircle.com health channel (http://www.icircle.co.uk/channels/feelgood/), the UK’s favourite website for women, and icircle.com’s pregnancy and birth channel, Babyworld (www.babyworld.co.uk). The campaign also features a one-month competition on Babyworld to win a holiday in a luxury suite at the Ragdale Hall health farm.
Glaxo SmithKline has developed a microsite in conjunction with Freeserve’s advertising sales team, providing Glaxo SmithKline with a tactical way to reach a mass audience with the Beecham Cold and Flu Scale over the flu season. Having never invested in online advertising before, the aim of the five-figure deal was to capture data, drive sales in-store and ultimately increase brand awareness. This exclusive campaign runs from the home page (Freeserve Today) and the health channel (www.freeserve.com/health). The microsite features a cold and flu scale that provides risk by region, plus the option for a weekly email update.
John Sanders, Brand Executive at Roche commented: One of the challenges of marketing Sanatogen ProNatal is that you are trying to reach woman at 3 different life stages – those planning to have a baby, pregnant women and new mums. Mediacom recognised that by using Freeserve and its partner sites (BabyWorld and icircle.com), we would be able to reach all of these audiences effectively. The sponsorship package and microsite allowed us to educate these audiences about Sanatogen ProNatal and encourage them to find out more either via direct mail or the newly launched pronatal.co.uk website.
These deals mark the internal promotion for Freeserve’s James Barnicott, who was instrumental in closing the deals. Working closely with Adam Landau, Sponsorship Manager for the Freeserve advertising sales team, James is assuming responsibility for identifying, packaging and project managing sponsorship packages across multiple Freeserve platforms, developing sponsorship revenues with clients and agencies, as well as working with Freeserve partners and channel managers to develop future opportunities. Previous to Freeserve, James was a Sales Executive at TSMS where he worked with HTV sales and a portfolio of agencies including BMP, Weston International, MGM and Walker Media.
Caroline Pathy, Advertising Sales Director of Freeserve said: These sponsorships are a fantastic example of how we’re working with clients and agencies to develop interactive brand advertising. We believe that these opportunities will become increasingly important to clients such as those in the fmcg sector, which is why we’re increasing our investment in the sponsorship team. James has demonstrated an outstanding creative flair coupled with an in-depth knowledge of Internet development, which we know will be of value to advertisers looking for beyond the banner solutions.
