6 Promotional Summer Campaign Ideas to Skyrocket Customer Engagement

Summer is the prime time to engage your customers with fresh, exciting campaigns. Creative promotional campaigns can capture your audience’s attention, drive engagement, and boost your brand’s visibility. At Brandmovers we know the summer season creates perfect opportunities for our clients to run creative and engaging promotional campaigns to stand out while also achieving important brand objectives and KPIs.

In this blog, we'll cover different types of promotions perfect for running summer campaigns designed to captivate and boost customer participation, along with a few examples of past and currently live summertime promotions from Brandmovers that can help you develop creative ideas for your next big campaign. 

Types of Digital Promotions Perfect For Summer

Often the term “promotion” can be used as an umbrella term but there are specific ones your brands can use to help you get the results you want. Below we have created a short “cheat sheet” that explains a few promotions and the different use cases or objectives you can utilize them for during the summertime. 

Sweepstakes

Sweepstakes are highly popular promotions for good reason! They're easily customizable to fit your needs, whether promoting a new product or integrating with other marketing initiatives. You can combine sweepstakes with contests, instant wins, and more, boosting their overall appeal.

This type of promotion is a great way to: 

• Capture consumer attention
• Drive brand engagement
• Increase customer acquisition

Instant Wins

Instant wins offer quick gratification, letting participants know immediately if they won, which encourages repeat play. Gamification allows your brand to create engaging games, keeping customers involved. Instant wins often achieve high participation rates by offering immediate rewards and multiple chances to win.

Brands can use instant wins to: 

• Build awareness 
• Drive key consumer behaviors (ex: enrollments, purchases, etc)
• Grow customer acquisition

Contests

Have you seen brands use real customer photos or videos in their campaigns? This content likely came from a User-Generated Content (UGC) contest. UGC contests effectively engage customers and expand reach. If a brand is strategic when launching a contest’s theme, it is easy for the contest to be repurposed or established as an annual event which will raise more promotional opportunities in the future. 

Perks of launching a UGC: 

• Brands can collect quality UGC that can be shared across social media 
• Contest raise brand awareness among customer audiences
• The visual appeal of the contest submissions can be easily, shared, admired, and celebrated 

Receipt Validation

Receipt Validation has several perks such as boosting consumer purchases, collecting data, and integrating it into other engaging promotions. Brands can increase product sales by encouraging customers to upload photos of their receipts for a chance to win prizes.

Use receipt validation to: 

• Drive product trials 
• Run retailer-specific shopper programs 
• Increase cross-selling 
• Reward customer loyalty 

Fire Drills/Giveaways

Fire drills create urgency, driving interest and exclusivity. They offer creative flexibility, allowing staggered product releases and social media teasers to build anticipation. An ongoing or recurring giveaway series also encourages repeat visits, giving users multiple chances to win.

Fire Drill or Giveaway promotions can be used to: 

• Put new products into consumer's hands 
• Promote seasonal items or brand collaborations 
• Raise brand awareness
• Drive customer engagement and acquisition 

Top Examples of Summer Promotions, Sweepstakes, and More

The list above is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to different promotions your brand can launch. You can often combine promotion types or utilize your brand's personality to develop creative themes or elements that will increase audience appeal and motivate customers to interact and participate in your promotion. Check out the examples below to see what summer promotions look like in action. 

Battle of the Beggin' Sweepstakes

Purina

Brandmovers and Purina teamed up and created a sweepstake to promote Purina's new limited-edition Beggin’ treats. To boost audience participation, the promotion incorporated a competitive twist by inviting customers to vote for their dog's favorite limited-edition flavor and determine which is the #1 flavor. After registering through the online microsite, customers could return each day to cast their vote and earn more chances to win the sweepstakes grand prize of free Beggin' for a year.  

Purina leveraged this promotion both in-store and online through cohesive point-of-sale messaging and on-pack messaging that brought customers to the promotion site. This allowed for a seamless user experience from purchase to sweepstakes entry and participation, and eventual winner confirmation. 

Golden Getaway Sweepstakes 

Puritan’s Pride 

Puritan’s Pride put together a fun summer sweepstakes experience for its customers by offering a vacation-based Grand Prize -- an unforgettable Hawaiian getaway along with other amazing prizes. This sweepstakes increased chances for customers to engage by offering two methods for customers to enter: via a purchase or through manual entry.

Customers who purchased any qualifying products during the sweepstakes were automatically entered for a chance to win. Participants could also enter to win without purchasing by providing their email when they signed up. During the time of the year when people want to unwind, relax, and have fun, this sweepstakes was a perfect balance of ease of entry and excitement for customers. 

The Great Summer Meatup

Johnsonville Sausage

What screams “summer” more than a backyard cookout? Johnsonville Sausage wanted to make sure their customers had everything they needed for their ultimate summer backyard “meat-up”! To help, we created the Johnsonville Sausage The Great Summer Meatup Promotion, a combined Instant Win and Sweepstakes promotion designed to increase sales during the summer months and boost customer engagement while building brand relationships.

The Great Summer Meatup was promoted on in-store point-of-sale materials and via sponsored content on social media channels; customers could scan the QR code found on the promotional materials access the dedicated promotional microsite and complete their registration form. 

After registering customers earned 1 sweepstakes entry, and they could then return each day to play the spin-the-wheel Instant Win game for additional prizes and sweepstakes entries. Johnsonville collaborated with brand partners such as BIC, TIKI, Charbroil, and more to create valuable summer grilling-based instant win prizes and Grand Prize packs, featuring products such as gas grills, fire pits, outdoor light setups, and more. 

This summer promotion was a great example of how brands can combine promotion types to achieve multiple objectives. Instant wins are great for driving repeat customer engagement while high-value sweepstakes prizes can appeal to wider audiences and motivate more customers to action. This was also a great example of how brands can utilize brand partnerships to expand reach and increase the promotion's appeal. 

Oceania Cruises Sweepstakes

Oceania Cruises 

What sounds better during the long, hot summer days than a 10-day cruise getaway? Oceania was looking to increase engagement, drive bookings during the summer months, and foster stronger customer-brand relationships. Brandmovers worked with them to create a sweepstakes to do just that! After customers entered their information, they had a chance to win a free 10-day luxury cruise for themselves and a guest. Golfbreaks by PGA TOUR also wanted to get in on the fun, so along with the cruise, the winner received a free golf trip up to the value of $2500.

This sweepstakes is a great example of bringing together different brands to broaden your target audience and expand customer engagement. 

The DIGIORNO Chaotic Good ‘Stakes 

DiGiorno

DiGiorno kicked off the summer with a slice of chaos and mischief by teaming up with Marvel Studios to create a sweepstake around the release of the new DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE movie, the DIGIORNO Chaotic Good ‘Stakes. In addition, DiGiorno released new limited-edition pizza flavors inspired by the upcoming movie for both pizza and movie lovers to enjoy all summer long. Brandmovers created a fun and engaging sweepstakes microsite that helped promote the sweepstakes, the movie, and the new limited-edition pizza flavors all at once. 

The sweepstakes offered multiple ways for fans to participate and enter to win, including a receipt upload option. Fans could scan the QR Code found on promotional and on-pack messaging, and register through the website for an entry. Fans could also earn additional entries if they purchased any DiGiorno Pizza products and uploaded their receipt during the promotion period. Participants had the chance to win a variety of amazing prizes such as Fandango promo codes to Marvel Studios’ DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE, fun merch, and a grand prize of a trip to Los Angeles.

This is a great example of using a sweepstake alongside the anticipation and fanfare surrounding a big movie launch to drive brand awareness among a broader target audience while also increasing customer engagement among long-time customers. 

Gerber Photo Search 2024

Gerber 

Having a contest or promotion that can become a yearly event is a great strategy in building a strong relationship with your customers, and allows them to get excited about participating annually. The Gerber Baby has been around for decades and in recent years Gerber took their search for the new Gerber spokesbaby digital through the annual Gerber Photo Search contest. 

For 2024 Gerber wanted to give their audiences the chance to celebrate all the adorable moments big and small from a baby’s first years. To enter the contest parents submitted a photo of their baby capturing a moment that they wanted to celebrate from their baby’s life, whether it was a big milestone or one of Gerber’s “Inchstone Moments” categories (such as a Sleepy moment or an On-The-Go moment), along with a brief story about their family. The contest winner became the 2024 Gerber Baby and received $25,000 from Gerber along with other incredible prizes. 

With the growth of the Gerber Photo Search contest year over year, Gerber decided for 2024 they wanted to recognize more babies than ever before! An additional 10 babies were selected to be winners of the “Inchstone Moments” categories and celebrated with the 2024 Gerber Baby, receiving a $500 Gerber.com gift card and special prize packs associated with their “Moment”.

This year's contest has ended, but start collecting those photos and videos to be ready when next year's campaign begins! Click here to meet the 2024 Gerber Baby, Sonny! 

Conclusion

As summer heats up, we can see a clear shift in customer behavior and engagement. Summer sparks a fun and carefree mindset that prompts people to find experiences that embody that same attitude. To make the most of this, create campaigns that offer your customers a sense of adventure that they don’t want to miss out on. Be sure that these campaigns align with your brand and its values to create consistency year-round. 

If you're looking for even more ideas on how to utilize digital promotions to drive your brand objectives, check out our Case Studies and Promotions pages for tips and examples of real-life successes. If you want to explore opportunities to create a unique and engaging promotion by partnering with Brandmovers, reach out to us today to get started.