And Then There’s That Time John Lennon Met The Daleks

Dalekmania + Beatlemania = Silly BBC/EMI one-off promotion?
Or ingeniously brilliant cross-promotion?

So I was watching the Dalekmania documentary

and as the narrators are talking about the influence of Doctor Who and the Daleks on the UK in the 1960s, this weird image flashes across the screen, without comment: John Lennon side-by-side with a Dalek.

I paused the DVD and jumped online to see if I could find some context for the image. I couldn’t. But, if you play Hard Day’s Night backward, you can hear Dalek Caan ranting about exterminating the Doctor.

A Chance Encounter?

Was this just a chance encounter between two British icons? Maybe. But, more likely, this was a cross promotion between the producers of the Dalek movies and EMI playing off the Beatlemania gripping British teenagers and the Dalekmania enveloping the country’s children. The cross promotion (presumably) increased product awareness and retail sales for both sides.

A Good Team-Up

As anyone who has tried to launch a new product knows–it can be very difficult to get someone to notice you, or to get the right people to notice you, or enough of the right people to notice you.

Cross-promotion can help.

When the Xbox first launched, Microsoft partnered with Frito-Lay, Taco Bell, and Pepsi to promote the console and its games through instant prizes and sweepstakes. Why?

For Microsoft, it was a chance to make in-roads with male teenagers–the audience they were trying to reach, that these select partners had in abundance.

For Taco Bell and the other partners, it was a chance to drive food sales by pairing menu items with scratch-and-win cards, and drive traffic to their websites with special promo codes to win bonus prizes.

Does your company engage in cross promotions? How do you choose partners for maximum reach and penetration? And would your promotion be more successful if Daleks were involved?