The Challenge

• CBS Cares wanted to promote awareness of early colon cancer detection by running a Sweepstakes to give away a free colonoscopy. Since the idea of an uncomfortable medical procedure is not appealing to the public, especially the target audience of the middle-aged consumer that is privacy conscious and not always eager to enter personal information online, as well as there being a long list of legal considerations in giving away a medical procedure as a prize, CBS came to Marden-Kane for help.

The Solution

• Marden-Kane worked with CBS legal to determine and resolve the legal issues that needed to be addressed in the rules to give away a risky medical procedure that is only recommended to people of a certain age
• The tone of the site was made very tongue-in-cheek, and Ozzie and Sharon Osbourne chosen as celebrity spokespeople, while still conveying that colon cancer is a serious condition. The promotion web site and videos also explained that the procedure, while risky, was worth taking for eligible Sweepstakes entrants ages 40-79.
• CBS flighted ads for the promotion during prime time, which caused high traffic spikes to the web site, so Marden-Kane hosted the content of the site in a cloud environment to handle this increased activity, while hosting the data collection for the Sweepstakes entries themselves on dedicated servers to increase the level of security to personally identifying information (PII) and put target consumers at ease.

The Results

• The site achieved the goal of promoting colon cancer prevention awareness when it received over a quarter of a million unique visitors and the campaign in general received several million media impressions.
• The average visitor spent just under 2 minutes on the site, with 60% of site visitors reviewing the video about the program.
• Even with massive traffic spikes during prime time, the site never experienced a slow down or crash.
• Middle-aged consumers showed their comfort level in entering for a chance to win a colonoscopy online, and entries in the Sweepstakes exceeded client expectations by over 600%.
• The Sweepstakes has been repeated successfully with other celebrities and is set to be run again in the near future.