PyroMarketing

Krispy Kreme Shares the Love

I love this idea.  Do you love it too?  Check yes or no.

Krispy Kreme Doughnuts found a way to fan the flames this Valentine's Day.  In PyroMarketing fanning the flames means equipping your customers to evangelize for you.  People who have had a good experience with your product or service are ready to tell others and you can expand their influence and extend their reach by giving them tools. That's what Krispy Kreme did.

Right now, at participating stores, when you buy 12 doughnuts, you also get 12 Valentine's Day cards.  The front of each card features a doughnut and some holiday message.  The back has the typical "To:" and "From:" spaces.  Best of all, you can redeem each card for one free doughnut!

  Think about how effective this is.  Each customer is equipped to recruit 12 additional customers.  It makes them a hero because it allows them to give free doughnuts to their friends.  And, since Valentine's Day cards often go to kids and kids can't drive to Krispy Kreme alone, each coupon probably brings with it a car-load of customers who buy many more doughnuts.  More amazingly, since Krispy Kreme routinely gives hot, fresh doughnuts to people waiting in line, this promotion is no more expensive than their day-to-day operation, it's just that they found a way to break this practice beyond the confines of their store and into the community at large. Sweet.

The free doughnut promotion is nothing new, but with this promotion Krispy Kreme has found a way to fan the flames by enlisting its customers as an unpaid sales and marketing force to help them spread the word...uh, I mean "share the love."

Do your customers love you?  Can you equip them to share that love with their social network?  Do you give free samples?  Could you empower and equip your customers to give them too?

Spread the fire.  GS

Direct TV

I’m baffled by Direct TV.  How can one company totally get PyroMarketing and simultaneously demonstrate that it doesn’t have a clue?  Are there competing factions within the organization struggling for control?  How else do you explain the schizophrenia of smart marketing campaigns and colossally stupid direct marketing blunders?

Dr. Jekyll

DirectTV Mover’s Connection is a brilliant program.  If you subscribe to DirectTV and decide to move, you take your receivers with you, but leave the dish behind.  When you arrive at the new place, DirectTV will install a new dish.  If you agree to a year of service, the new dish is free.  Presto, they retain a valuable customer.  Ah, but that’s not even the best part.

Because you left your dish, the person who buys your old house has almost everything they need to subscribe.  And should they decide not to buy immediately, the dish on the roof is there to remind them of what they are missing and how easily they could get it.

Or how about DirectTV’s Spread the Word campaign?  Subscribers can earn a $50 credit every time they refer someone who activates their service.  DirectTV fans the flames by providing email messages and printable brochures people can use to tell others.

Mr. Hyde

So why would DirectTV use a telemarketing firm that knowingly solicited people on the Do Not Call Registry?  USA Today reported that DirectTV will pay a $5.3 million penalty to settle charges that it violated the FTC’s do-not-call telemarketing rule.  If approved by the courts, the settlement will be the largest ever assessed by the FTC in a civil protection matter.  The questionable telemarketing firm DirectTV employed was Global Satellite.

Guess what?  If people so completely loath telemarketing calls that they sign up for the Do Not Call Registry, they probably won’t buy DirectTV service from the person whose call interrupted their dinner.  And so what if they did make a sale or two.  The damage done to DirectTV’s image (and now its bank account) far surpasses whatever revenue they make from the few who buy.  It’s simply not worth it.

You cannot serve two masters.  Either embrace PyroMarketing and begin serving and respecting consumers with its principles or embrace the often-exploitative practices of mass marketing, but please don’t try to do both.  Spread the fire.  GS

Sleep Number Beds

If you want people to laugh, don’t tell them you’re funny, tell them a joke.  If you want them to buy your product, don’t tell them it’s wonderful, let them try it.  In a world of nearly infinite choice people don’t have the time to investigate all of their options.  Experience provides the shortcut to product understanding.  But giving people an experience is easier for some products than it is for others.

Take mattresses for example.  We spend a third of our lives on our mattress.  Choosing the right mattress is important.  The problem is most of us could read specifications or listen to sales people for hours and still not know a good mattress from a bad one until we tried it.  Unfortunately, a few self-conscious moments on the display model in a crowded furniture store is hardly enough.  How could a manufacturer of quality mattresses give people a longer trial? Select Comfort’s partnership with Radisson Hotels provides a brilliant example of touching it with the match.

Last week I traveled to Los Angeles and stayed at a Radisson hotel for a few nights where, upon checking in, I discovered my room was equipped with a Sleep Number Bed.  (This was the first time I have ever actually known the brand of the mattress in my hotel room.) A control on the nightstand allowed me to adjust the firmness to my liking and a laminated card told me about the mattress and its features.  Three full night's sleep convinced me that it was a very comfortable bed.  But Select Comfort didn’t stop there.

They placed a small display at the check out desk that said, “Once you’ve experienced the individualized comfort of the sleep number bed exclusively at Radisson, you won’t ever want to sleep without one.”  The display featured a pad of tear-off sheets with details of the promotion and a web URL where I could learn more. www.goldpointsplus.com/sleepnumber 

Select Comfort found a way to let people experience its mattress (touch it with the match).  The tear-off promotional sheets made it easy for me to take information in the mattress with me and share it with friends (fan the flames) and if the hotel is sharing contact information about its guests with Select Comfort, then they are also saving the coals by keeping a record of the people who have tried their mattress so they can follow up with them later.

If Select Comfort could find a way to let people try its mattresses for an entire night, then surely there is a way to let consumers experience your product or service too.  Can’t think of any right now?  Why don’t you sleep on it?  Spread the fire. GS