Pumpkin marketing

Michael Stone, I believe, hits a marketing home run with this suggestion in his recent Markup and Profit Blog posting:

If you ever read the Peanuts comic strip, you’ll remember Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin. The Great Pumpkin appears on Halloween and does something (I can’t remember what).

Here is my take on pumpkins and your business. Many of us have small farms nearby selling pumpkins. How about offering the owner a lump sum for 100 – 150 – 200 pumpkins? You figure out what it’s worth and make an offer.

Then send a note to all former and future potential customers telling them they can take their kids or grandkids to the farm, using the coupon you are giving them, and get a free pumpkin. Maybe schedule it for one or two specific days only so you can be there to personally greet each family. In a few special situations, like military families where dad or mom are away serving our country, make sure everyone in the family gets a pumpkin even if you have to buy a few extra. (Don’t do that for business purposes – do it because it’s the right thing to do.)

When you send the note, thank each family for their past business and extend the assurance you will do a great job in the future. Ask if they know anyone who wants to do work on their home or building. Referrals are great things. One new job and you have paid for this whole program, and it’s fun as well.

Might be worth a try. Okay, it’s getting close to Halloween and you’ll have to really move to get it done before the holiday, but is there any special event in your area for Thanksgiving or Christmas? Maybe arrange for a discount on tickets to a show, or a tree lighting event, or for Christmas trees, or holiday candy somewhere, or a free ornament at a local bazaar, or . . . . get the idea?

Little gestures can go a long way -- and don't cost much money. The good will (and resulting repeat and referral) business generated this way will pay off far more than a Yellow Pages ad or invasive and irritating canvassing strategies.

The "Wow" gift

Ned Overton of FW&D LLC in Arlington, Virginia gives out his own private label wines to clients and key referral sources. He says he makes sure the wine is of the highest quality.

Can simple gifts be helpful both in attracting and retaining clients? Absolutely. Thoughtful remembrances really work, partly because of the reciprocity principal. Under this business guideline, simple and small acts of generosity are often rewarded many times over. The challenge is to get it right and match the generosity and spirit of your gift with the values of your clients. And don't forget the packaging!

For example, consider these two gifts suggested and used by contractortalk.com forum members.

The first is the private label wine provided to clients and key referral sources by Ned Overton of FW&D LLC in Arlington, Virginia. Overton says he is careful to ensure the wine in the bottles is of the highest quality because he knows the people consuming it often know as much if not more about wine than he does. It leaves a lasting and memorable impression, and the well-designed label on the bottle seres as a great reminder any time he or his clients serve it to themselves or friends.

Does this "WOW coffee" Wow you? Just a little care in packaging will turn this concept into a great idea.

My second example shows the dangers of raising expectations and suggests how just little improvements may help the cause. The contractor (I won't name him here, as I never name anyone when I don't speak positively about them in this blog), promised that he would be soon sending me a package of his "WOW" coffee.

A week or so later, I eagerly opened the package. Alas, the home-roasted coffee had been sent in a store-bought zip-lock bag and I could barely read the "WOW" on the label (you will have trouble reading it too, on this photo, but that is more a reflection of my lack of skill as a photographer than the label's actual quality.)

In a follow up email to me, the contractor wrote:

The real reason I'm writing you is I sent a bag of coffee to (name deleted), he gave it to his wife who was very negative about the coffee, she said it tasted like sh*t. And then said I shouldn't give out coffee that I roasted myself?

It's Colombian and not great, but I've been drinking it and thought is was OK and better than supermarket beans. I won't buy it again but let me know what you think. It would be terrible if I'm giving out bad coffee."

This is of course not the "WOW" you are seeking.

I haven't tried the coffee yet, but I fear the packaging does more harm than the coffee itself.

Perceptions and habits shape the value of gifts. For example, for some reason I have a preference for a blue coffee mug which I've been using for years. In fact, about 12 years. The mug had been in the gift basket provided by the builder of our new home on closing. The builder's logo has long disappeared from the cup, but for some reason I find my coffee "tastes better" with the cup than without.

(The builder in Ottawa, while successful and reputable, is not perfect --but I still like and use their cup.)

My sense is the contractor who sent me the WOW coffee is close to being onto a brilliant idea.

Coffee, especially self-roasted coffee, is much less expensive than wine, and it is probably harder to go wrong on it. You also have a story to share. Just a little packaging will go a long way -- get coffee bags of the durability and quality of places like Starbucks, and prepare a much larger WOW label (when you get really successful, you can print it on the package itself).

Then, have your designer prepare the overall package label with your logo and some thoughtful imagery. You can then give half-or quarter pound bags out as samples, and perhaps full pound bags with a couple of custom mugs on closing.

(Even better, if you know your clients' particular tastes, go to Starbucks, buy a pound, and replace it with your packaging! And if you know the clients and they are sources of referral business, this gift can continue year after year, since coffee (and wine) are consumed and need to be replaced.)

An idea from South Africa

I'll let the original poster, Marc Ashton say this in his own words:

We have recently taken on a new client in the construction Project Management arena and they came up with a really unique way of acknowledging their clients and key staff as part of their communications / marketing strategy.

In a nutshell what they did was ask us to design three hand drawn construction scenes and then super-impose caricature faces of key staff and customers into the scene. It was quite nice in that you could have the Customers "key man" fiendishly pouring the cement mixer onto the hapless Project Manager and the Financial Manager pulling her hair out at these shenanigans. It creates a really nice vibe for a small Corporate Gift in either a Calendar or framed Wall Picture format. Without talking my own book too much it does make a nice quirky and personal gift that a client can appreciate and you get to emphasise some of their hobbies and character habits.

Not sure if this works for me, but then again, the idea of personalizing and designing something that 'connects' to your clients in a highly individual way has a lot of appeal and is probably worth the money. If so, feel free to contact Rival Industrial at http://www.rival.co.za or Marc Ashton by email at marc@rival.co.za

Gifts? (2)

I've decided to try an experiment, giving each of our company's full time employees a $100 budget to select gifts of their own. The restrictions are that the gifts must not be for friends or co-employees and that the employee must document who, what, and how much is spent to receive reimbursement. Employees are not required to spend the money -- any surplus will be donated to charity. Other than that, I am not putting any restrictions in place.
The thinking here is that gift giving is something that works best if based on real knowledge and connection; so it needs to be decentralized -- and that if we are building a healthy business culture, we should not put all of this in the sales department's hands. The budget is low enough (this year) that I don't need to justify it in the planning process/cycle.

Gifts?

Image from Mind Your Manners: Tips for business professionals visiting Germany

Should we have a seasonal gift-giving program?

This question came up at a recent staff meeting. Chase proposed we obtain gifts for our contract advertisers. We briefly discussed costs; it looks like the expense would be $1,000 or so, obviously not a business-breaker; but (as it certainly is not in our annual planning budget) more than an impulse "yes". I deflected the decision on the matter, noting that we had never given significant gifts on the client side, and I wanted to be careful and thoughtful about it, and not rush the decision. Chase accepted the decision, but said he would use his own resources to purchase gifts for his key clients.

I've been thinking of this some more, as the Christmas Holiday season approaches. The more I think of it, the more challenging the issue becomes. The reason is that conventional one size-fits-all gifts are not necessarily effective, the wrong gift can do much more harm than good, and that you will have trouble finding empirical evidence of the value of gift giving.

But, ahh, the situation inverts when you consider the importance of reciprocity and the influential effect of a truly well thought and creative gift -- especially where one isn't expected.

For example, multi-millionaire Seymour Schulich describes in his book how he managed to obtain scarce library resources as a university student.

"The solution was to get the reading list ahead of time and reserve the books before everyone else, but how,?" he writes in Get Smarter: Life and Business Lessons. "I hatched a plan with my then classmate Lawrence Bloomberg, a serious, persistent fellow (who grew to become my best friend.) We went to the Laura Secords store and bought the biggest box of fine chocolate we could find -- $5 for five pounds (the same box would probably cost about $50 today). We gave it to Miss Sears, the intimidating, no nonsense woman who ran the library.

"Now we didn't know what was going to be on the next MBA reading list, but Miss Sears sure did. So when the herd of nerds next appeared, they were told the books were reserved for Schulich and Bloomberg. Our classmates could never figure out how we always seemed to have our names at the top of the waiting list. . . .

"This small anecdote illustrates one of the most important concepts for a young person to learn, in business and in life: reciprocity. In simple terms, reciprocity is the idea that people have a very hard time saying no to someone who has done something even a small favour, for them."

Fair enough. And a good argument, you may say, for an effective gift-giving program. But here is the problem I'm having in implementing it. I'm simply not sure that a small business can effectively define what gift is right, to who, when the real element of gift giving -- and its true effectiveness -- is based on individual and intuitive decision-making.

For example, Schulich and Bloomberg appreciated that the often-unrecognized librarian would appreciate the gift but its scale and scope were not so excessive as to be seen as a bribe. (Gifts to school teachers can have a similar effect; Vivian says the small gifts she sends on behalf of Eric seem to do something positive in the way the teachers respond/return to her calls.)

Cultural sensitivities are challenging, a gift that is right to one person can be downright offensive to another. Bribery and 'influence peddling' rules also creep into the picture, especially if the gift is going to someone in the public sector where you are hoping to win further work. Gifts with promotional logos or messages on them may be appropriate (and of course the promotional gifts business is huge) but the payback from such unpersonalized gifts is debatable and I think hard to measure effectively.

So, what should we do? One of my good friends in business said he inverted the rules of gift giving and always made special efforts to be generous to his suppliers, not his clients. He said the inversion worked like a charm. My late father, at his drugstore, always took a more conventional approach. Bottles of perfume, chocolates, and other stuff were wrapped each year and distributed to nearby medical offices -- clearly a rational move for a pharmacy (even wiser, he provided low rent space to at least one medical group in a building he owned near the drugstore -- clearly this is an extreme but highly effective way to combine reciprocity and geography effectively.)

I have made it company policy that our sales reps should send out individualized thank you cards to clients (we of course pay for the cards and postage). Obviously it gets a whole lot more complicated however in setting a policy -- and budget -- for gifts. The reason may be that this issue defies centralized policy-setting. Effective gift-giving really works; but you need to be both thoughtful and careful in your decisions (and maybe a little spontaneous.)

Here are a few articles on the Web dealing with this topic.

Image Insights: Gift Giving Etiquette

Gift Giving Savvy: How to avoid cultural blunders and faux-pas

Business Gift Giving at the Holidays: Do's and Don'ts