Cheez Doodles Courts Teens and Tweens Digitally

Inconic snack food manufacturer Wise Foods, Inc. and digital marketing and innovation firm Zemoga have unwrapped a new design for CheezDoodles.com. The new campaign encourages creativity and musical aspirations in young people through the introduction of an alternative rock/pop group -- dubbed the Cheez Dudes -- playing original music, along with an augmented-reality (AR) contest providing teen and tween consumers the opportunity to win musical instruments for their own garage bands.

Employing computer vision and object-recognition technology, AR enables people to make their real-world environment interactive and digitally usable. For the Cheez Doodles campaign, New York-based Zemoga created a new Web site, casual game content, the AR contest, original music, a Facebook Fan Page and a Twitter site as components in an aggressive digital marketing campaign.

“Cheez Doodles successfully appeals to moms, but we needed to get more engagement with teens and tweens. So we worked with Zemoga to develop an extensive online marketing campaign to bring the Cheez Dudes to life,” explained Kevin Foltz, brand manager at Berwick, Pa.-based Wise Foods. “We decided to appeal to kids’ creative sides with art and music branded themes, rather than a typical sports-related platform. That’s how the Cheez Dudes band was born.”

This week, East Coast supermarkets received 2 million Cheez Doodle grocery-sized bags with a two-inch-by-three-inch sticker referencing the “ROCK THE CHEEZ!” contest. Additionally, eight-foot in-store displays feature header cards trumpeting the promotion, in addition to shelf danglers, and an e-newsletter sent to 70,000 registered Wise Snacks coupon subscribers. The campaign aims to add registered users and invite them to take part in further contests.

By signing up as a fan of the Cheez Dudes, kids will be entered into a sweepstakes for the chance to win $1,000. Young consumers can also upload a customized video as part of the ROCK THE CHEEZ! contest. The person who submits the best video will win all of the items to start their own band, including a Fender Stratocaster Guitar, a Fender Precision Bass and a complete Tama drum set. Two additional winners will be able to choose between a Fender Stratocaster or Fender Precision Bass. With the assistance of an online tutorial video, entrants can craft their own Cheez Dudes stage and performance videos. The contest runs through Dec. 31, 2009.

“This digital marketing campaign is a first for Wise Foods brands, and a game changer in the snack foods category as Cheez Doodles uses AR to reach tweens and teens,” noted Zemoga CEO DJ Edgerton. “The Cheez Dudes campaign is one of the first to use AR tied to a contest, and expands the real world for kids and CheezDoodles.com visitors. We’re excited about all aspects of this campaign -- its original music, user-generated material, video, social media -- not to mention an engaging new brand mascot who encourages kids to make their dreams happen -- to become the next Fall Out Boy or My Chemical Romance by winning their own garage-band instruments.”