Payless widens its promotions footprint

Family footwear retailer Payless ShoeSource has hooked up with Sony Pictures Consumer Products to offer an exclusive promotional shoe based on the Jackie Chan Adventures animated series, which has started its second season on Kids’ WB! as a daily strip from Monday to Saturday. Featuring characters from the toon and a martial arts-inspired slip-on style, the shoe is available now through December at 1,970 Payless stores in the U.S. and in English-speaking Canada. Kids who buy the footwear will also receive a Jackie Chan watch. The promo will be supported by in-store signage, a December FSI that will reach 40 million households, and an ad in Sports Illustrated for Kids.

Taking a stealthier approach to hip-hunting, Payless has recruited 12 teen girls to be its Style Spies for a year. The volunteer sleuths will be sent on several missions, reporting back to Payless about trends in fashion, hairstyles, makeup, music, entertainment and shopping. Some potential outings include a night on the town to tap into what teens do after hours, and hair/makeup runs to the mall to get an idea of what beauty products are hot. The cool tips will be used to fine-tune product concepts and marketing for Payless’s Lower East Side line of teen-targeted shoes and accessories.

Activision and Quiksilver hook up for extreme cross-promos

Seeking to attract more extreme sports enthusiasts to its Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Kelly Slater’s Pro Surfer vid game franchises by tying in with brands that pack a high degree of street credibility, Activision has formed a cross-promotional alliance with boardsports gear maker Quiksilver.

In addition to benefiting from the cool-by-association factor, Activision will gain access to new distribution outlets via Quiksilver’s roster of skate, surf and boarding retailers. In return, Quiksilver clothing will be featured in Activision’s latest O2 games–Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2X and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3. Launching this month, the two titles combined are expected to deliver more than one billion consumer impressions for Quiksilver.

Blueprints for the multi-year alliance also encompass national gaming competitions, in-store kiosks, POP materials in Quiksilver Boardriders Club retail stores, local market consumer promos and cross-promotional advertising.

Discovery Kids goes walking with new promo partners

To tout the December 9 launch of its Walking with Prehistoric Beasts on-air event, Discovery Kids has hooked up with Life and BBC Worldwide Americas in a cereal promo of Jurassic proportions. The initiative, which runs through until December 31, consists of an instant-win sweepstakes featured on 10 million boxes of Life and Cinnamon Life. The packages will be plastered with four different images from the TV special, as well as containing tune-in info and a bunch of intriguing dino-facts, such as the weight of a baby woolly mammoth (which is a whopping 250 pounds, by the way). Roughly 3,000 boxes will also contain a winning coupon for either a Walking with Dinosaurs video-and-book set or a Discovery Kids SabreTooth Cat Fossil Dig Set.