David Fiske A subtle blend of affiliate marketing and web development

Today sees the collaboration between Sainsbury's, Universal Pictures and Vue to promote the new film Mamma Mia. Nothing interesting there until you find that they are offering 10 free Nectar points for watching a trailer.

So why does this interest me?
 
10 points equates to 5 pence so we're not talking a great deal but nevertheless, there will be loads of people like me who will watch the trailer and collect the free points. It's something for 2 minutes of your time.

The reason this is clever is that Sainsbury's appear to have stumbled across an audience grabbing tactic. They run a similar promotion with Thomson local, offering 50 points just for calling a company listed in the directory, up to 250 points a week (£1.25). It's not a lot of money but £1.25 a week for 52 weeks equates to £65 of Argos vouchers for example (less the phone call costs).

Tesco recently ran a promotion (ends 06/07/08) whereby you would get 50 Clubcard points for signing up to a newsletter. That's 50 pence.

We're not talking a lot but it's enough to get listed on a site like Hot UK Deals and perhaps some of the freebies sites.

The point I'm making here is that by offering a small incentive, people will usually commit to a task. 5 pence to watch a trailer is nothing in the grand scheme of things, especially if the book a ticket at Vue cinemas after watching the trailer. Good value all round I say.