Today is also the start of the NCAA March Madness. Have you filled out your brackets yet? If not you can fill one out here at the official Capital One NCAA March Madness Bracket Challenge or here at Yahoo! Fantasy Sports Tourney Pick 'Em. I'm sure there are many more online you could find as well. But you need to do it today.

The first two games actually went off last night and there are two more tonight to determine who will make it into "Round of 64" which begins on Thursday. All to decide who will play in the Final Four in Atlanta at the Georgia Dome on April 6.

With Coca-Cola being a big sponsor and headquartered in Atlanta, they are hosting Bracket Town which consists of several events happening in and around Atlanta and the Georgia Dome.

The games will be broadcast on CBS and on three Turner Networks. Fans can also watch all the games live by downloading the NCAA March Madness App available in iTunes for Apple devices.

Twitter this year is helping to bring all the exciting plays to the mobile masses within a few minutes of them happening via Instant Replays. Twitter introduced the "instant replay" concept last year with ESPN for college bowl game highlights which allows users to watch videos from their phones, tablets and PCs without leaving Twitter.​ AT&T and Coke Zero are sponsoring the March Madness videos, and the replays will begin with a short video clip from either sponsor. You can follow the official Twitter page here @MarchMadness.

We assisted one of our clients with the Dunkin' Philly Madness Sweeps which they are running on their Dunkin Philly Facebook Page. They're giving fans daily chances to win college gear, Dunkin Donuts mGifts, basketball tickets, coffee for a year and a final Grand Prize of $5,000. Also for every entry, they’ll donate $1 to Coaches vs. Cancer of Philadelphia. (up to $5,000). Sweepstakes ends on April 8.

There are also still chances to win tickets to the Final Four tournament. LG Electronics is currently running their Do March Right Tip-Off Bracket Challenge on their Facebook page. The top prize consists of airfare for two to Atlanta, hotel accommodations, tickets to the semi-finals and the championship games and $500 spending money. Pretty sweet package.

So get your brackets ready today. We'll be cheering for the Syracuse Orangemen, the #4 seed in the East Division. They lost the final Big East Tournament to Louisville, who ended up getting the #1 seed spot. So you never know. At least we have some good basketball games to watch while we still wait for Spring to actually arrive!

If you've been following my blog for awhile, then you should be familiar with BlogPaws. For those that are not, BlogPaws is an online community of pet lovers made up of pet bloggers and pet brands. BlogPaws was co-founded back in 2010 by Yvonne DiVita and her partner, Tom Collins, both good friends of mine and who helped me launch this blog. BlogPaws has become the go-to resource for bloggers and brands to partner on projects and campaigns, to be educated on social media, and to attend face-to-face meetings. The first BlogPaws Conference was held in Columbus, OH, in April, 2010, and last year it moved out West to Salt Lake City in June.

This year's 2013 BlogPaws Conference will be held back in Tyson Corners, VA, on May 16 - 18. It was held here two years ago in August in which we unfortunately experienced Hurricane Irene. I was one of the lucky ones that was able to get out on an earlier flight on Saturday because I was heading south to visit family in South Carolina instead of heading north in the direction of the hurricane. So I literally flew over the hurricane as it was coming up the coast.

I have been a speaker at each of the past BlogPaws conferences speaking mostly about running contests and sweepstakes. This year I didn't make the agenda, but I am attending and am the contest administrator which I have set up the contest on the BlogPaws Facebook Page and am again using the ShortStack Application.

A panel of BlogPaws staff members and volunteers will judge all the submissions based on the following criteria: Creativity 50%, Originality 25%, and Relevancy 25%. The Grand Prize winner will receive a trip to Tysons Corner, VA, to attend BlogPaws 2013 which includes round trip air transportation, hotel accommodations at the Sheraton Premiere and of course admission to BlogPaws 2013. A Second Prize winner will receive hotel accommodations and admission to BlogPaws and a Third Prize winner receives the free admission.

Many of the captions are written in the voice of the pet, which are quite funny. We held a similar contest a couple of years ago where participants submitted their own photo along with a caption that was in the voice of the pet. Deb Barnes was the winner of that contest with this beautiful photo of her cats with the featured caption.

I am very much looking forward to going back to this year's conference and seeing some old friends, both two-and four-legged! I'm planning to bring my daughter, Alex, with me this year who will be graduating from college the week before. She's applied to vet schools and still waiting for word.

There is still plenty of time to register for the Conference. You can find all the information here on the BlogPaws website. I'll be sure to give you an update on the contest results and announce the winner sometime in April.

Today @WalmartGreen will ask Twitter users to respond to a specific #WinItWednesday sustainability inspired challenge question. Three winners will be selected by judges representing Wal-Mart Stores, and the Mother Nature Network for each month's challenge question. Participants must follow and reply to @WalmartGreen and include the hashtag #WinItWednesday in their tweet. Each of the three winners will receive a $100 Walmart gift card and a chance to have their Submission featured on Mother Nature Network’s The Leaderboard and The Green Room, Walmart's sustainability blog, within that month.

For the first contest entrants were invited to share their idea for an eco-friendly gift for their Valentine (in 140 characters or less !). This first contest resulted in a 5.4% spike for @WalmartGreen in their number of Twitter followers in only 6 hours. This equaled 1.5 new followers every minute. The contest was also mentioned by John McCain and Planet Green on Twitter! Here's an overview of last month's winners which includes Terri Pointon who's idea is turning old wool and cashmere sweaters into new items.

Walmart's “The Leaderboard” was launched earlier this year through a new partnership formed with the Mother Nature Network with the purpose of creating a special editorial channel on the site for readers to explore the people, businesses and organizations leading in sustainability.

“Thanks to the ingenuity, passion and innovative thinking of so many people, we’ve seen an increase in sustainable technologies, processes and options in the past decade,” said Andrea Thomas, senior vice president of sustainability at Walmart. “These new ideas have helped companies, like Walmart, make significant progress toward our sustainability goals. Walmart has a responsibility to use its size and scale to influence positive change, and we believe ‘The Leaderboard’ will be a place to showcase cutting edge ideas and spark further adoption.”

Today's challenge question was just posted at the scheduled 11am ET. This month's challenge question states that "It's time to get energized for spring" and ask "What’s your trick to get your family to save energy?" So check it out and share a tweet @WalMart Green with one of your eco-friendly ideas.

By Donna DeClemente

I wrote my first blog post on this blog, Donna's Promo Talk. six years ago. So I'm celebrating my blog's birthday and the fact that I'm a six year-old blogger. Thanks again to my good friend and founder of the Lipsticking blog and BlogPaws, Yvonne DiVita, along with her business partner and now husband, Tom Collins, for helping me get started. Lipsticking was launched a couple of years before this blog, so we're both considered old timers now in this business.

I have developed a few traditions in my blog postings over the years and one is in celebration of my blog's birthday. For this I write about the same brand that I devoted my first blog post about which is Dove. I love the brand and use their products and have been following their Real Beauty Campaign over the years which I continue to support.

So as I did last year, I sat at my computer this morning, opened up Facebook and hopped over to the Dove Facebook page. Last year I did the same thing and to my surprise I found that Dove had just converted to the new Facebook Timeline. Dove was one of the first brands that Facebook partnered with to roll out their new Timeline for business pages which is now a year old.

Dove's current promotional campaign is called the Dove Truth Files where they invite fans to "Reveal the Truth and Reap the Awards". Part of the campaign includes this Instant Win Game they are running on a Facebook app. The game is giving away over 20,000 prizes instantly such as Amazon gift cards and music downloads, plus everyone receives a Dove $2.00 coupon.

Participants "Play Detective and Put Your Bar or Body Wash to the Test." To start you need to pick the body wash or bar that you currently have in your shower from a choice of 13 different products.According to which brand you chose, you are then served a custom video that describes the "truth" of what is wrong with the brand you chose. I chose Nivea and the woman in the video demonstrated how Nivea is harsher than Dove. You can then proceed to see if you're an instant winner and if not you're invited to come back tomorrow and try again. Pretty clever I think. You also have the option to play a few games such as a word scan, a forensic mix-up or a photo analysis. Of course everyone can share and invite their friends to play as well.

In reviewing the Dove Facebook page I found it very interesting how they are engaging with their fans. They post something at least once a day and they asks many questions. As part of the Dove Truth Files Campaign they are posting updates every Tuesday that invite fans to "come clean". Here's yesterday's #TruthTuesday, "Come clean about what you REALLY do when your kids leave the dinner table".

If you have a Facebook Business page, or are managing one for a client, what have you done to optimize it over the past year since the new Timeline was introduced? You first need to decide what you want people to do once they are there. The Facebook page consists of these key areas you should be focusing on:

• The Cover or Banner Image - update it frequently have make sure it reflects the brand.
• The Profile Image - This shows up in the fans news feeds so make sure it is sized properly.
• Tabs - These images that are located under the banner image and link to your apps and photos. These can all be moved, except for the photos tab. So make sure you have those at the top you want to give priority to.
• Photo Tab - This will always display the last photo that you upload, so make sure it a brand friendly image.
• About Section - Include basic information along with links back to the company's website, blogs, and other sites.

Looking back over the past ear since Timeline was launched it appears that a Facebook business page now is a required element in everyone's marketing mix. It's not easy keeping up with the latest technology and new social and mobile platforms.

Right now I've been focusing on updating my blog with a new look on a WordPress platform and hope to launch it this coming week. So check back soon and take a look to see the new look. Let me know what you think and thanks again for being a reader of Donna's Promo Talk.

Women TIES is hosting another luncheon event today that I will be heading out to attend shortly. You may have read some of my previous posts about this organization. TIES stands for "Together Inspiring Entrepreneurial Success" and the organization's leader, Tracy Higginbothom, strongly believes in the power of women supporting each other in their businesses.

Tracy started out as an event planner in her business and launched Women TIES back in 2005 which has now grown to reach many women in upstate and western New York. I was honored almost three years ago to be the speaker at her first Rochester Chapter event and was invited back to speak again this past October. Here's the post I wrote about my topic which was How to use Facebook to Promote Your Brand and Grow Sales.

The event today is sold-out! Tracy had to cut-off the registrations at 70 since that's the total the restaurant can fit in the room we have.This now makes the 4th Women TIES event this year that has sold out in various cities throughout upstate New York. It appears that 2013 is going to be the year business women and entrepreneurs are ready to achieve great success! Today's event is perfect timing for mid-February. We're already over a month into this year and we all could use a good reminder that without sales, you don't have a business!

We all have business prospects from contacts made in 2012 and new ones we already made in 2013. The key to sales success in the New Year lies in getting these prospects to act and purchase our products or services. Vicki James will be our speaker today  who will explain how the "Marketing Hourglass" can help us move prospects through a series of Know, Like and Trust phases at their own pace to bring us more sales success. Vicki is going to demonstrate how to create our own "Marketing Hourglass" by no longer pushing prospects but instead allowing them to make the journey on their own terms and ultimately, removing the need to sell.

Most of us women don't like to "sell". We may be passionate about the business that we are in, but when it comes to sales, that's were the majority of us really need help. Learning about new sales strategies should be an excellent investment of our time today. Vicki's own company is called Stand-Out-Results focuses on mentoring small to medium size business with their marketing and sales strategies.

The event is co-sponsored by Joleene Speaks which is run by Joleene DesRosiers Moody. Joleene is known as the "Unstuck" Consultant - helping women entrepreneurs strengthen their selling power to make money enthusiastically and fearlessly. I heard Joleene speak last September at the Women TIES Annual Retreat and she was highly motivating. So I am looking forward to seeing her and hearing her speak again.

My hope is that 2013 will be a great business year for myself and all my friends and colleagues and readers, not just women. We all use a different mix of marketing and sales tactics to achieve our success. Having the support of others, whether it's a collective group of women, such as Women TIES, or our own individual mentors and advisers, it helps us to become stronger together than we are as one. As Tracy always signs-off..."In Entrepreneurial Spirit".

Valentine's Day seems to becoming a bigger and bigger holiday every year. Many brands have been jumping on the V-Day bandwagon and offering up some sweet deals for their customers. Here's a few that I've come across.

In addition to the e-cards, inside each box of heart-shaped donuts are six Valentine cards. Fans can also visit Krispy Kreme’s Facebook page to customize a Share Your Heart Facebook cover photo.

Pizza Hut is promoting it's Last Minute Lovers Packages on Twitter. Today's the last day to tweet @PizzaHut using the hashtag #LastMinuteLovers with a plea for help to have a chance to win one of 24 daily (one per hour) prizes.

The packages include a bottle of the chain’s perfume, Eau de Pizza Hut, and a $20 Pizza Hut gift card good for a Lover’s Pizza or the new Big Pizza Sliders. The packages will supposedly by shipped in time to arrive for Valentine’s Day. According to Pizza Hut, 78% of people by gifts one week or less before Valentine's Day. I just tweeted, so we'll see if I'm a winner today!

I'm currently working with the team from Alitalia on this We Love Italy Photo Sweepstakes that's running off their Facebook Page. Two lucky fans will win round-trip air transportation for two on Alitalia to Italy. I will get to draw the first winner tomorrow on Valentine's Day and proceed to contact them to relay the great news! The other winner will be drawn after the promotion ends on February 20th. 

To enter fans need to submit a photo that shows then with any friends, family members, spouse or partner, someone special, enjoying a moment in Italy! There are some great photos that have been shared that you can view here.

Yesterday I informed one lucky woman that she was the winner of this beautiful tear-dropped shaped necklace from IPPOLITA Jewlery. She was one of many who entered the Ciao Stella Sweepstakes that we hosted for them on their Facebook page. They have a great video still posted on the page you can view along with some great V-day present ideas if you still need to drop a hint!

I'm actually going out to dinner tonight with my husband to celebrate Valentine's Day. There's a fairly new restaurant I've been wanting to check out and Wednesdays they allow BYOB of wine with no corkage fee! So we're celebrating a day early. What's your plans this year's Valentine's Day?

An estimated 108.4 million people watched the Super Bowl this past Sunday? The Nielsen Company said Monday that the Baltimore Ravens' 34-31 victory over the San Francisco 49ers was the third most-viewed program in television history. Both the 2010 and 2011 Super Bowl games were slightly above this year hitting the 111 million mark.

While the game has now become a distant memory, if you were one of those viewers you have to admit it was extremely entertaining. Between the great brother vs. brother pregame storyline, a second half comeback by the 49's, all the ads, the tweets, the Facebook posts and Beyonce and girls performing an amazing halftime show, there was something for everyone! Add in that the drama of the lights going on in the stadium, and it made it the longest Super Bowl game in history. This gave CBS more airtime and allowed us all to chat more on social media as well as get up and stretch!

By now I'm sure everyone has watched the ads and heard and read the reviews to determine in their minds who are the winners and losers of the this year's Ad Bowl. Who really came out a winner, besides John Harbaugh and the Baltimore Ravens, is Twitter! The brand really supplanted itself as much more than just another social media network.

According to MarketingLand’s count of hashtag and Twitter mentions, 26 ads during the game itself had a Twitter reference compared to only 4 that referenced Facebook, one to Instagram, one to YouTube and not any to Google+. Last years only 8 ads mentioned Twitter. A total of 24.1 million Super Bowl related tweets were posted apart from the ad hashtags. A Twitter spokesperson reported that “By the beginning of the second half, the volume of Tweets had already surpassed last year’s Tweet total".

When the power went out in the Mercedes- Benz Superdome at the beginning of the third quarter it prompted a surge on Twitter of 231,000 tweets per minute which even outpaced those during Beyonce's halftime show. Some brands were quick to respond in real-time to take advantage of this huge audience. One of the Super Bowl advertisers, Oreo, posted this to Twitter "Power out? No problem. You can still dunk in the dark." The tweet was retweeted 10,000 times within one hour.

This simple, but brilliant, execution is exactly what social media marketing is all about. It obviously cost far less than the elaborate, expensive TV ad Oreo ran in the game before the blackout which was done by their agency Wieden & Kennedy. Brands should learn from this.

Tide was another Super Bowl advertiser brand that hopped on the blackout band wagon on Twitter with this tweet:

 
I haven't read any further insights into how this brand was able to react so quickly. But obviously they were prepared.

So that wraps up my coverage of Super Bowl XVLII. I hope you enjoyed my posts. It really is only one football game. However, it seems to grab the attention of the world!

Congratulations again to John Harbaugh and the Baltimore Ravens for becoming this year's champions as well as Jim Harbaugh and the San Francisco 49ers for making it there. How we gonna top this next year?

 Super Bowl XLII will be broadcast from New Orleans this Sunday not only on the CBS TV network, but viewers can also watch it on their small screens. We can even listen to it on Sirius radio if you happen to be in your vehicle. So not only do we get to watch the Baltimore Ravens and San Francisco 49ers go at it, but also Madison Ave. who will fight it out in another Ad Bowl. Two main consumer categories will again dominate the ads this year, automobiles and beverages.

Even though Pepsi is a huge advertiser this year and is sponsoring the halftime show featuring Beyonce, Coca-Cola is also back. Last year if you recall, Coke tried something new with their popular polar bears who reacted in real-time to the Bowl game’s activities and ads. Viewers got engaged by sharing their thoughts and comments to the bears’ reactions via Facebook and Twitter. So Coke learned a bit from this and is taking it one step further with this year's campaign called "Coke Chase".

The premise of the campaign is to allow viewers to determine the outcome of a “chase” in real time, along with the content of a post-Bowl commercial. The ads feature three groups of people lost in the desert; “cowboys,showgirls and badlanders". They come upon a mirage of a Coke in the distance and then compete to reach it first.

Viewers are invited to vote on who will win the Coke Chase game by visiting Cokechase.com from any screen (mobile, tablet or desktop) to view the ads and vote for their favorite team via YouTube. The winning group and all results will be revealed in a TV spot immediately following the end of the Super Bowl. Here's a peak at the Cowboys sabotage clip that is being promoted today on Coke's Facebook page.

In addition, the first 50,000 consumers who engage with the brand after the game via MyCokeRewards, will receive a free Coke.

It will be interesting to see how many people do in engage with this campaign. I guess if the football game is boring, it will give us all something else to do. I'm hoping for a good game though. What do you think of Coke's campaign? You think today's consumer's are ready to interact with the brand on their mobile devices while keeping up with the game, the party and the TV ads? We'll see.

The Baltimore Ravens' John Harbaugh and San Francisco 49ers' Jim Harbaugh are providing this great brother vs. brother pregame storyline in what now is being called "Harbowl" or "Superbaugh". I'm just curious to know who their parents, Jim and Jackie Harbaugh, who currently live in Santa Clara, California, will be routing for!

I started my review of this year's Super Bowl promotional marketing campaigns a couple of week's ago with this blog post: Get Ready for Super Bowl XLVII Marketing. Pepsi & Doritos have both launched their promotions, followed up with this one, Crackin Gangman Style Sweeps ties in with Psy Super Bowl ad from Wonderful Pistachios. Here's a new one to continue with the tradition.

Pizza Hut launched The Hut Hut Hut Contest offering winners the opportunity to star in their commercial that will run during the CBS Super Bowl Pregame Show just minutes before kickoff. The Contest was initially launched on December 10 on the Pizza Hut Facebook Page and was accepting entries up until this past Sunday. Pizza Hut is in the process of contacting the winners now.

Football fans were invited to submit short videos, no longer than 15 seconds, of their best, silliest or most creative recitation of the words every quarterback shouts — "Hut. Hut. Hut." There was no need to include Pizza Hut in the video, just had to use the word "Hut". Pizza Hut has a panel of judges reviewing all the submissions and will take the best clips and add them to this commercial. There may be up to 10 winners who will have their few seconds of fame!

Here's the video Pizza Hut created to launch the contest:

All 480 submitted videos are available to view through the Facebook Contest App. Besides the videos that make it into the Pizza Hut Super Bowl commercial, a total of $25,000 in cash awards will also be given out. 1st place winner will receive $5,000, 2nd place $3,000, 3rd place $2,000, 4th-13th place each gets a $1,000 and 10 honorable mentions will each receive $500.

This coming weekend will be the first in awhile without any NFL games, except for the Pro Bowl, but that doesn't really count! We do have NHL Hockey back though. The Buffalo Sabres are off to a 2-0 start! Life is good again.

We're down to four teams standing: Baltimore Ravens vs. the New England Patriots in the AFC and the San Fransisco 49er's vs. the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC. Who will make it to the Super Bowl XLVII game on February 3 in New Orleans this year?

Last week I started my review of promotional marketing campaigns focused on this year's Super Bowl game with this blog post: Get ready for Super Bowl XLVII Marketing. Pepsi & Doritos have both launched their promotions.hype has begun. As is tradition with my posts, I'm going to continue covering some of the marketing hype up to the big game!

Wonderful Pistachios will be joining the list of Super Bowl advertisers for the first time with a 30-second spot featuring the now famous Psy, star of the “Gangnam Style” video that was the first to break 1 billion views on YouTube. This will also mark the first time that Psy will be in a U.S. TV ad which will air in the game’s third quarter.

The ad won't be previewed prior to the game, but according to Marc Seguin, VP of marketing for Wonderful Pistachios, it takes the brand’s long-running “Get Crackin’” campaign to new levels which he reported that they have invested more than $100 million in the four years that it’s been running.

The campaign also integrates a social media presence. Wonderful Pistachios launched a sweepstakes on their Facebook page on January 9th called "Crackin' Gangnam Style”. Participants are invited to enter the sweepstakes by uploading a photo of how they Get Crackin’ Gangnam Style. They are permitted to enter once a day, however, they must upload a different photo with each entry.

The sweepstakes also allows people to enter without a photo if they chose to enter on the Get Crackin website either online or via a mobile device. Each eligible entry will be included in a random drawing that will take place after the Super Bowl for a chance to win $10,000 cash to be used towards a 12-month lease of a 2013 Mercedes Benz SLK 250,

Seguin also reported that they are contacting creators of other popular YouTube videos encouraging them to create parodies of this Psy ad once it’s been aired on the Super Bowl. So Wonderful Pistachios may soon have their own viral video hit.

Anyone should be able to find a package of Wonderful Pistachios at your their retail store much more easily this month. The brand has free-standing displays tied into its Super Bowl ad in about 50,000 stores with some featuring two to four displays in various locations, and others featuring multiple displays, according to Seguin.