Starting next week, consumers who buy one of the GPS-implanted detergent boxes will be surprised at home, given a pocket video camera as a prize and invited to bring their families to enjoy a day of Unilever-sponsored outdoor fun. The promotion, called Try Something New With Omo, is in keeping with the brand’s international “Dirt is Good” positioning that encourages parents to let their kids have a good time even if they get dirty.

Omo accounts for half of Brazil’s detergent sales and is already found in 80% of homes there, so Unilever’s goal is more to draw attention to a new stain-fighting version of Omo and get it talked about rather than looking for a big increase in sales.

That made the idea of doing a promotion where the prize finds the consumer, rather than the consumer having to look for the prize — and maybe not bothering — appealing.

Fernando Figueiredo, Bullet’s president, said the GPS device is activated when a shopper removes the detergent carton from the supermarket shelf. Fifty Omo boxes implanted with GPS devices have been scattered around Brazil, and Mr. Figueiredo has teams in 35 Brazilian cities ready to leap into action when a box is activated. The nearest team can reach the shopper’s home “within hours or days,” and if they’re really close by, “they may get to your house as soon as you do,” he said.

Once there, the teams have portable equipment that lets them go floor by floor in apartment buildings until they find the correct unit, he said.

Of course, Brazil has a high crime rate, and not everyone is going to open the door to strangers who claim to have been sent by her detergent brand to offer a free video camera. Bullet has thought of that. If the team tracks a consumer to her home but she won’t let them in, they can remotely activate a buzzer in the detergent box so that it starts beeping. And if the team takes too long to arrive, and the consumer has already opened the box to see if she’s a winner or just do laundry, she’ll find, along with the GPS device and less detergent than expected, a note explaining the promotion and a phone number to call.

“Anything can happen,” Mr. Figueiredo said. “We have to be innovative, but we don’t know what reaction to expect from consumers.”

In a big web component, the site experimentealgonovo.com.br (Portuguese for “try something new”) goes live in August, and will include a map showing roughly where the winners live, pictures of each winner and footage of the Bullet-Omo teams hunting down the GPS-enabled detergent boxes, knocking on doors and surprising consumers.

“It costs more than a traditional promotion and is riskier because it’s never been done before, but it’s worth it,” Mr. Figueiredo said. The technology aspect of the promotion costs less than $1 million, out of Omo’s overall marketing budget of about $23 million.

“We believe in using new technology for promotional marketing,” Mr. Figueiredo said.

Plus Bullet just likes figuring out how to ingeniously embed stuff in products. Two summers ago, sales of Unilever’s Fruttare Popsicles soared when Bullet disguised 10,000 iPod Shuffles as popsicles and popped them in freezer cases. The agency’s creatives had noticed while reading their iPod instruction manuals that an iPod can operate at temperatures below freezing. They immediately began freezing their own devices as a test, then constructed a fake ice-cream bar case that mimicked the popsicle but fit an iPod, and a wildly successful summer ice cream promotion was born.

July 30 (Bloomberg) — Research In Motion Ltd., maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, plans to introduce a tablet computer in November to compete with Apple Inc’s iPad, according to two people familiar with the company’s plans.

The device will have roughly the same dimensions as the iPad, which has a 9.7-inch diagonal screen, said the two people who wouldn’t be identified because the plans haven’t been made public. The device will include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless technology that will allow people to use their BlackBerry smartphones to connect to the Internet, the two people said.

RIM is racing to come out with a product to rival the iPad in the fast-growing market for devices that bridge the gap between smartphones and notebook computers. Apple, based in Cupertino, California, last month said it sold 3 million iPad tablet computers in 80 days after they debuted in the U.S.

“They can’t wait for a second generation of devices from Apple or they’ll fall too far behind,” said Ashok Kumar, an analyst with Rodman & Renshaw Inc. in New York.

RIM plans to call the tablet Blackpad, according to one of the people familiar with the company’s plans. RIM, based in Waterloo, Ontario, acquired the Internet rights to blackpad.com this month, according to the Whois database of domain names.

RIM is stepping up its competition with Apple on multiple fronts. The company is hosting an event in New York Aug. 3 at which it will debut its BlackBerry 9800 slider phone, according to one person familiar with its plans. The device will feature a full touchscreen like Apple’s iPhone and a slideout Qwerty keyboard to allow for easy e-mail typing, the person said.

Broader Battle

The company plans to use the phone to regain the market share it has lost recently to its U.S. rival. RIM’s share of the smartphone market fell to 19.4 percent of global shipments in the first quarter from 20.9 percent a year earlier, according to researcher IDC, based in Framingham, Massachusetts. Apple claimed 16.1 percent of the smartphone market, up from 10.9 percent a year earlier.

In the tablet market, RIM will have to demonstrate how its device can stand out against products including the iPad, which has attracted buyers because of its close integration with Apple’s iTunes service and the many software applications created by independent developers. RIM’s tablet will be closely integrated with the BlackBerry smartphone to allow people to use RIM’s e-mail system and other features, the person said.

“I don’t think it’s a zero-sum game,” said Kumar, saying that innovation by Apple, RIM and other competitors will increase the size of the tablet market.

More Tablets

Korea’s LG Electronics Inc. said this month it plans to introduce a tablet computer in the fourth quarter that runs on Google Inc.’s Android software. Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said yesterday the software company plans to increase its focus on tablets. Hewlett-Packard Co., the world’s biggest personal-computer maker, said it plans to produce a tablet device that runs on Microsoft’s Windows operating system.

RIM rose 21 cents to $55.92 at 10:37 a.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The stock had dropped 18 percent this year before today as Apple had climbed 22 percent.

Marisa Conway, a spokeswoman for RIM, declined to comment, citing company policy not to comment on rumor or speculation.

– Editors: Peter Elstrom, Ville Heiskanen

To contact the reporter on this story: Hugo Miller in Toronto at hugomiller@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 30, 2010 10:45 EDT