As any media buyer will tell you, a campaign's creative is irrelevant if unseen by the public. It is for this reason that cereal boxes have long been to promotional marketing what the Coronation Street break is to advertisers.
This is why online home entertainment retailer Play.com has negotiated a deal with Nestle Cereal Partners (CP UK). As part of its pre-Christmas campaign, Play is running a promotional offer across Nestle's cereal brands. The move is part of Play's strategy to continue expanding beyond its laddish customer base and into the family market.
According to online analyst Hitwise, Play has around 35 per cent of the home entertainment market - DVDs, games and CDs - making it the UK's biggest retailer in that sector. Like many of its competitors, Play is able to avoid charging VAT on its products as it is based in Jersey. But this advantage does not extend to books and high-value electrical items, where Play lags behind Amazon.
So now, with the festive season arriving this year at a time of financial turmoil, Play wants to push its value proposition to new customer groups. Marketing director Martin Talbot says: "The majority of our marketing is in acquisition. We currently have nine and a half million customer accounts, and the Q4 objective is to add one million more."
Family business
Because of this, Talbot believed it was time Play became more active in its pursuit of family customers. This was the brief for Play's partnership agency, Cocktail Marketing. The agency's founder, Chris Reed, has been working with Play for three years, but says this was one of the tougher briefs he has been given with regards to getting the right deal.
"We've been continually looking for better brands," he says. "That's easier now Play is a big brand itself. A promotion with CP UK works because as well as having a presence in homes across the UK, it also has a presence in Tesco and Sainsbury's, with which Play is in competition. But we've been working on this promotion for two years."
In essence, the on-pack promotion's simple mechanic belies the amount of time Reed spent negotiating - customers who buy a Nestle cereal are able to claim one of 10 DVDs for £1. The promotion is appearing on five million boxes, including the Shreddies, Clusters and Cheerios variants. The DVDs are newly released family movies ranging from Spider-Man 3 and Evan Almighty to Surf's Up and The Water Horse. "We could have done something around books, but it's easier to use DVDs because of the perceived value of entertainment products in the eyes of customers; CDs have less perceived value as they are heavily promoted via newspapers and given away free."
The question of perceived value of the premium, which is being sold in-store, and whether the promotion could damage it, was a major sticking point. Although fundamentally this is a promotion between CP UK and Play, there is a third partner - the studios that own the films. And when there are a number of partners involved, the biggest hurdle is not the creative work, but keeping all the different parties happy. It was here that Play was able to act as a negotiator. "The requirement from Nestle was that the offer carried value; we were able to offer our relationship with all the studios," says Talbot.
Reed says the ideal scenario for CP UK would be the DVDs being given away free, but the studios are reluctant to allow this for their new properties because of the effect on retail costs. The negotiation of the offer price was a big bone of contention. But from Play's point of view, being one of the biggest UK home entertainment retailers helped it sell the idea to the studios. Talbot says that in the end, the £1 price tag and the on-pack exposure for the DVDs made the promotions acceptable to the studios.
Speaking about the campaign, CP UK promotions manager Carolyn Evans says: "It's important the offer has a broad appeal and has high visibility on-shelf. That is even more important in the run-up to Christmas. The aim was to offer real value to mums and something that could be enjoyed by the whole family."
For Play, there is a two-fold benefit to the promotion. First, it gets its branding on-pack; second, the acquisition of new registrations as customers redeem the offer. Reed says cereal packs are ideal for promotions where there are a number of redemptions on offer. Previously, Play did a similar promotion with Heinz, where the size of the pack meant there was limited space for the films.
The perfect package
But even with a cereal box, there is a limit to how many films can be displayed on the front. "It took a lot of toing and froing," says Talbot. "If we had 10 films, it would have been too cramped. Heinz tried to do it and there were too many logos. This stands out more."
There is another aspect to the packaging that allows this type of offer to run. The capability to print individual voucher numbers inside each pack enables the brand to run offers like this. In the past, it would have run the gauntlet of overredemption. This is still new technology in terms of printing and it is interesting to note that, while online is perceived to be at the cutting edge of promotions, the first promotion reported by P&I to use individual pack codes was Bird Eye's Win Your Mortgage campaign last year (P&I, September 2007) - and the marketing team regarded it as one of the main innovations of the work.
"We have to look for brands that are able to print individual codes on-pack, and not everyone can do that," says Reed. If it was a case of collecting names, this would be fine. But in addition to building the brand, the aim of the campaign from Play's point of view is to capture quality accounts and customers. This would be difficult if there were no restrictions on redemption.
Talbot is hoping for 100,000 redemptions as a result of the campaign. What is certain is that, with the current economic crisis and Christmas approaching, the offer could not be better timed. Talbot is optimistic that home entertainment is well placed to withstand the pressure.
In any recession, there will be winners and losers. With pushes like these, Talbot believes Play will be among the former. People will stay at home more, he says, but they will also be looking for the best deal.
Fact file
北京赛车pk10: Play.com DVDs for £1 promotion
Brief: To drive site registrations for Play
Live from: Late November to August 2009
Delivery: On-pack, in-store point of sale and online
IN MY VIEW
9/10
The ever-competitive cereal category remains at the forefront of the promotional battleground alongside quick-service restaurants, snack food and soft drinks, so this is a strong partnership that allows Play.com to work with the second biggest cereal manufacturer in the UK - Nestle Cereal Partners (CP UK).
Play's twin objectives of brand exposure and driving new customer accounts are well addressed by the campaign. There are fewer bigger FMCG canvases to work with than a cereal box to increase brand exposure, and with promotionally responsive consumers, the campaign should smash the redemption target because of its appearance on five million boxes.
The only question I would ask relates to the historic role of instant reward and gratification, which has played such an important role in cereal's past. CP has remained committed to the pack insert (a highly costly mechanic) through its free books programme at a time when other cereal makers (notably Kellogg's) have stepped towards alternatives that deliver pack value, such as competitions and free tickets (to, say, the zoo or a local swimming pool).
This move may be confirmation of the strategic shift from the other manufacturers to change the face of cereal promotions forever. A simple overlay tier offering every customer free delivery or a 10 per cent discount on any full-price Play purchase could have better pressed home the customer acquisition objective and offered value in every pack.
The specific films remain some of the biggest DVDs recently released and should be a motivating reward for £1 - great value for promotionally savvy consumers in the current economic climate, given the average cereal box costs £1.50 to £2.
From a CP perspective, this is real value with the purchase, appealing to kids but bought by mum. I'm sure CP has addressed some challenging customer conversations with the big grocery retailers who see Play as an aggressive competitor to their own DVD offerings.
I was disappointed to see the campaign was not being applied in a truly integrated platform with TV support, but if the pack, online and in-store activity work hard, this should drive the campaign home with great effect as the cost-conscious consumer decides what to buy in the cereal aisle.
- Andy Duff is managing director of ATOM Marketing.