Increasingly, Marketers Take Campaigns To The Streets; Special events play big role as consumers grow used to traditional media.(MANAGING FOR SUCCESS)(CHOICE WORDS)

Byline: MARILYN MUCH

This season, Coca-Cola put a high-tech spin on its summer promotion. The soft drink maker issued more than 100 cans that can be converted into a global positioning system transponder and cell phone.

Lucky customers could use the phone to call and register for prizes such as a 2005 Chevy Equinox. The promotion was crafted by Momentum Worldwide, a special events, sponsorship marketing and promotion agency.

The program gave consumers experiences that connect them directly to the brand, says Christopher Weil, CEO at Momentum. Momentum is a unit of McCann-Erickson Worldgroup, which itself is a unit of the Interpublic Group.

To cut through the clutter of ad messages, marketers are trying new gimmicks. For instance, last fall, Momentum staged a free Dave Matthews Band concert in Manhattan's Central Park to promote an AOL software upgrade. AOL street team members handed out software discs, some of which contained a message saying the holder had won two concert tickets. People could also win tickets at AOL's Web site.

Marketers spend between 2% and 5% of their budgets on media programs that integrate various elements into one package, says media newsletter editor Jack Myers. That number could double by 2008 and swell to 30%-50% by 2020 as technology advances, he says.

Momentum's Weil talked to IBD recently about this marketing trend.