Little Jack felled but one beanstalk. It was a justifiable act under the circumstances – he was seeking refuge from an aroused cannibalistic giant.
We haven’t heard the last of giants. News America and Valassis fell forests to support the weekly insertion of promotional offers in America’s Sunday papers. For scant justification. Or so we thought, until these free-standing-insert giants created “councils” to undertake the task of clarifying our misconceptions. These councils serve as spin doctors for the giants’ perceived image ailment.
Perhaps we promotion people have our own image problem. Are we perceived as not being too bright? Perhaps it’s a deserved reputation. After all, don’t we frenzy-feed big bucks to the giants, who in return bury our brands smack dab in the center of the junk section of the Sunday paper? Don’t we bask in short-term results while dealing long-term death to the brands we purport to promote?
So it’s understandable if the FSI Council folks assume we can’t read, and consequently why they advertise to us using big pictures. Big charts actually, which depict 100 percent growth, accompanied by the headline: “. . . FSIs can grow your sales.” Does the council actually hope we naivelyy accept that FSI advertising can double our brand’s sales?
As a service to fellow industry illiterates, we engaged a Literacy Volunteer to read the body copy to us. It says that full-page FSIs deliver 50 percent greater incremental volume than do half-page FSIs! In other words, if a half-page FSI increases your volume by two packages, you can expect a full-page ad to increase your volume by three packages – not four packages as the council’s graph implies. A further caveat: This performance applies to only eight categories. If your brand doesn’t qualify, apparently you have to wait for new research.
Couponing is big business. The amalgamated cost of delivering and fulfilling FSI coupons is nearing $5 billion a year. Scarce wonder the promo domos of Westport spend their early retirement years in fern bars, dreaming of new surfaces on which to print coupons.
Over 80 percent of all coupons are delivered by FSIs, which achieve a 1.4 percent redemption rate. In one wag’s words, the category’s largest promotion technique has a bloody 98.6 percent failure rate!
The bloody truth is, every packaged goods manufacturer we’ve met laments having ever gotten into couponing. They yearn for ways to convert these budgets to brand-building programs, but couponing is a quicksand tactic out of which they can’t seem to climb.
How did they get there? Originally the medium was an effective way to influence retailers. It encouraged them to feature and display – hands down the most powerful sales tools. But is there any evidence that it builds businesses or brands, or is it just a temporary sales driver, best suited for trial generation and defensive purposes? Does it remain trade-motivational, or is it merely an old idea?
We don’t have answers to these pressing questions; we’re just promotion bumpkins. But we do know that answers are being sought. Manufacturers are testing coupon reduction schemes and the shifting of funds to co-marketing programs, among other things. They find that running coupons in retailers’ circulars will give their brand the same volume gains while delegating the discounting image to the trade.
Meanwhile, the giants do not sleep. Under the banner of yet another “council,” the Coupon Council of the Promotion Marketing Association, they have announced that September 1998 is . . . ta-da . . . National Coupon Month! Seriously. Check it out for yourself at www.couponmonth.com. This integrated campaign will feature such profound events as a Kids Coupon Design Contest for children under 13. For Pre-Ks there’s the diabolically clever Parent & Teacher Guide program, designed to get adults to use FSIs to help children “learn to read better and gain knowledge of math, money, and the calendar.”
Point to the pretty kitty, Megan, and say, “Hurry, daddy, there’s 50 cents off cat litter!”
Who knows? Maybe herein lies the source of our next generation of promotion experts and – imagine this – they’ll be able to read!
Network
