After seven years as a marketing consultant to AcuPOLL, Rodger Roeser has gained the trust of the company’s CEO. In fact, AcuPOLL, a brand strategy firm based in Cincinnati, is “comfortable with me recommending some crazy things,” says Roeser, president of Eisen Management Group, a marketing, promotions and public relations agency in Cincinnati. So AcuPOLL didn’t bat an eye when Roeser tossed out his “magic bean” idea.
AcuPOLL has made its name on its ability to predict which marketing concepts and ideas will be successful with consumers. Their services allow Fortune 500 companies to test the waters, so to speak, and spend money only on campaigns predicted to be successful by AcuPOLL. So, when a company like Procter & Gamble comes up with a new household product, AcuPOLL’s services can help determine not only the public’s reaction to that product but also what marketing tools might best promote it.
In a constantly shifting marketplace, it’s crucial for AcuPOLL to devise new tools to assess new products and marketing proposals. “A lot of the really out-of-box ideas never make it to testing because they’re so expensive,” Roeser says. “They just get chucked.” As a result, he adds, companies miss out “on many really good ideas that consumers might have really liked.”
To allow for greater testing of ideas, AcuPOLL’s CEO, Jack Gordon, created the Germinator, which allows brand execs to test as many ideas as they want for only $1,000 an idea – a bargain compared to full-blown market testing programs that can run from $20,000 to $50,000 apiece, Roeser says.
To promote the Germinator service, Gordon felt the company would need a particularly creative promotional product and marketing campaign. “I came back with the perfect project,” Roeser says. Using a play on words and capitalizing on the idea of growth, Roeser suggested the company send a “magic” bean (a la Jack and the Beanstalk) to carefully targeted marketers from a list of current clients and prospects. This special bean has the AcuPOLL logo etched on it, and as the plant grows, the bean will sprout and the company’s logo will be imprinted on it.
Gordon and AcuPOLL loved the idea, Roeser says. The company sent magic beans to “300 very select companies and company executives,” which includes branding executives at the country’s largest consumer companies (think Coca-Cola and SC Johnson, among others).
To grab their attention, AcuPOLL sent the beans in a cylindrical container with soil, the bean etched with AcuPOLL’s logo, and a postcard with details about the Germinator service. They also included a URL for recipients to log onto AcuPOLL’s Web site, where they could download a white paper and also watch a video about the Germinator service and what it can do for them.
In addition, the package included an invitation to test the bean. Recipients were asked to note the day they received the bean, plant it, then mark the day it sprouts as well as the day it reaches one inch in height, and send a picture of the plant back to AcuPOLL via the Web site. A note included with the mailing says that by the time the plant reaches an inch high, the recipient could have gone through the Germinator process—usually a two- to three-week time period.
At about $10 apiece ($5 for the magic bean, $1 for the postcard, and $2 for the mailing box, plus postage), “this isn’t a cheap thing,” Roeser admits. “You’re looking at $3,000, so you’re not sending this out as a mass giveaway. It’s a very tight 3-D mailer to a very select group of people.”
Selective targeting is key, he says, to the success of the promotional campaign. The boxes were sent out October 15. Ten days after the mailer dropped, the company’s sales team began follow-up phone calls, and already more than a dozen companies have signed up for the service, Roeser says, though he won’t reveal how much new income the mailer generated for AcuPOLL. Roeser’s firm, he says, has an online tool which can track and extract contact information from visitors to AcuPOLL’s Web site, even if visitors don’t type in their information. Eisen’s proprietary tool is helping to determine response rates and provide AcuPOLL with follow-up contact information as well.
“I would be disappointed if we don’t get somewhere between a 25 and 50 percent response rate,” Roeser says. “This is something that all of these brand execs need. Nobody’s going to throw this away,” he adds. “It’s got such a curious effect” with the etched bean and the reference to the childhood story of Jack and the Beanstalk paired with AcuPOLL’s CEO Jack Gordon. “It just ties in the whole concept of the Germinator.”
The recent mailer is scheduled to be the first in a series of mailers to play on famous “Jacks.” Will it have staying power? Our expert weighs in with a seven-step plan to make the promotion even more effective.
Betsy Cummings is senior writer for Successful Promotions.
| Our Expert: Kim Powerstilson |
I’ve done a lot of direct mail campaigns and this is one of the most creative,” says Kim Powerstilson, founder of Power Strategies, a marketing and brand consultancy in Woodland Hills, Utah, and author of the online Do It Yourself Social Media Marketing Series. Here are Powerstilson’s seven ideas for ways that the AcuPOLL campaign can ramp up the creativity and ROI even more.
1. APROACH INTERACTIVE
CAMPAIGNS CAUTIOUSLY. BE WARY OF ASKING FOR TOO MUCH
There’s no doubt the magic bean etched with AcuPOLL’s logo is clever, Powerstilson says, but she warns against such interactive campaigns, particularly when dealing with such a high-powered, busy group of recipients. There’s definitely a chance that they’ll plant the bean, she says, but seeing and doing are two different things, particularly in a world where most executives are stressed about company performance in a tight economy. They may be interested in Germinator, but the chances of them planting, growing and submitting pictures of their magic bean and the plant it produces might be a long shot.
2. CHECK THE CALENDAR.
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
It’s an age-old rule of marketing that major mailers are never sent out after October, Powerstilson says. “You don’t send something like that out when it has a lengthy return time in mid October,” she says. “They should have sent that earlier”—like end of summer or early September. As a general rule, you don’t start any new campaign around the holidays unless it’s relevant to the season. And you never do it after October 15,” she adds, for the simple reason that “November is pretty dead” as far as new business is concerned. Most savvy marketers use the holiday months to cement current client relationships with cards and gifts, she adds.
3. PRE-PROMOTE. RAISE INTEREST BEFORE MAILING
It might be smart to warm up the recipients first with a postcard or attention-grabbing, smaller direct mail piece, preparing executives for the fact that they will be getting a larger package and impactful direct mail piece shortly, Powerstilson says. That prompts them to look for the piece and recognize it when it comes across their desk. Or, send a series of “countdown” e-mail messages to prepare them for the package, perhaps with a hint in each one of what’s to come.
4. KEEP THE CONVERSATION GOING. MULTIPLE MESSAGES MAINTIAN INTEREST
Powerstilson advises that it would be smart to not stop at one mailer. Roeser says the company has more planned, all of which will continue the theme of famous “Jack” references. That’s key, Powerstilson says, but adds that the mailings should be consistently spaced and mailed to keep AcuPOLL top-of-mind with prospects. In addition, Powerstilson says, AcuPOLL might be well served by sending out intermittent mailers with messages that keep the conversation going between them and targeted marketers by way of these promotions.
5. SPARK SOME COMPETITION. SHOW WHAT OTHERS ARE DOING
One way to do that is to continue the buzz by sending a postcard or direct mail piece that includes images and results of people who planted their beans, watched the plant grow, then submitted photos of their plant. “It reconnects recipients with that campaign,” Powerstilson says, and makes them think, “Wow, other people grew their bean, and I should have.” It gives instant credibility to the campaign and keeps AcuPOLL in the mind of its target audience, without being pushy or conducting a hard sell. E-mail messages with photos can be powerful as well.
6. FOLLOW THE THEME. CONSISTENCY COULD BE KEY
Powerstilson says the company could include more plants in the future, to push that theme forward – white lily bulbs mailed in January, for example, will keep the company’s name in front of prospects and also provide them with a plant that will beautify their offices in the spring. Branded gardening tools are another hot idea. Ditto for seed packets, which are inexpensive and can be easily mailed.
7. DON’T FORGET THE PHONE. SOMETIMES THE WEB ISN’T EVERYTHING
Since the company has a sales team to follow up with the mail campaign, Powerstilson suggests that the company not push the online component too hard in this particular promotion. Guiding an audience to your Web site is usually key, Powerstilson says. But with an audience this powerful, logging on to a Web site to download a white paper is not only a time waster for many of them, but is borderline insulting. These are savvy marketers who have sent out multitudes of mailers themselves. In this case, they’re probably better served by simply being handled through a good old phone call, she advises. |
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