#127 Prune Board Effort

http://dennyhatch.blogspot.com/2021/05/4127-prune-board-effort.html

 

#127 Blog Post — Tuesday, May 18, 2021

 

Guest Post by Bob Blinick
Blinick Direct, Lawrenceville, NJ

 

Direct Marketing for PR Is Almost Always a No-No.
This Oddball Effort Pulled an Amazing 33% Response 

 

I love it when a subscriber suggests a direct marketing scheme that none of us would have a chance in hell of knowing about or even imagining. With 50 years in direct mail/direct marketing, every chip of my DNA—every mentor, every company, every boss I ever had—knows it's nuts to use direct mail for PR/publicity for three reasons. 1) Direct mail is too expensive. 2) With direct you test small, reconfirm large and larger and then roll out to surprise hell out of your competitors, cream the market and rent a villa on the Amalfi Coast for the summer. 3) Direct mail results are precisely measurable in terms of arithmetic—product (or service) pricing, allowable cost-per-order and leveragability. My thanks to Bob Blinick of Blinck Direct, Lawrenceville, NJ for sharing. —DH

“THE STRATEGY WAS ALIMENTARY”
A direct mail program for The California Prune Board

Objectives
• Induce trial of California prunes.
• Sell more California prunes

 

Strategy
• Establish the connection between prunes and health.
• Re-position prunes as more than just a good tasting snack. 

Key insights/learning:
• Both physicians and consumers were unaware of the fiber content and nutritional value of prunes, and considered them “just a snack food…”
• Materials used in a physician’s office must stand alone and require little, if any, active support from the physician and or staff

Tactics
• A multi-step program that educated physicians about the nutritional value of prunes, enticed them to distribute prune samples to their patients, educated patients, and provide an ongoing "involvement" mechanism (cents-off coupons and a recipe book) to motivate future prune purchases.

Creative Elements: Initial Mailing Package to Physicians

Shipping Box to Physician

A sample package of prunes
• (See lede illustration above) 

  

Cover Letter
Explains the elements in the shipping box — A Physicians’ Guide to Fiber, Fiber Facts for a Healthier You, and a sample pack of prunes.   The letter had a modest Call To Action and asked them fill out and return a Business Reply Card to order more prune samples and additional Fiber Facts sheets for patients.   

Nutritional information for physicians written and
designed to look like it came from a medical journal

     A pad of information sheets for patients

A Supply of cents-off coupons for patients 
• Attached to a Business Reply Card that enabled them to request a booklet of prune recipes.

A reply card
• Enabled physicians to request additional samples, patient information sheets and coupons.

PHYSICIAN FULFILLMENT MAILING CONSISTING OF:
• Large display box with 100 one-ounce sample packages of prunes.
• Additional patient information pads.
• Additional cents-off coupons and BRCs.

 

PATIENT FULFILLMENT
• Letter.

• Prune recipes booklet.

• Additional cents-off coupons.

MEASURES OF SUCCESS

• 33% - Initial response rate from physicians.
(Percent of physicians who requested the large box of samples and additional supplies.)

• 7% - Response rate from non-solicited physicians who saw the prune sample box and Fiber Facts sheets in a colleague's office

• 12.6% - Coupon # 1 redemption rate: 
(Percent of consumers who redeemed the coupon obtained from the doctor’s office.)

 

• 9.8% - Coupon # 2 redemption rate
(Percent of consumers who redeemed the coupon supplied with the recipe booklet.)

Takeaways to Consider —DH

• The simplest business model I ever heard was Jay Leno's which ran just 6 words:  "Write joke. Tell Joke. Get check."

• The Blinick/Prune Board business model—a series to physicians, physicians to patients/consumers—and Prune Board to patients/consumers was tricky, complex stuff.

• The numbers were eye-popping compared to general direct mail where—in those days—a 2% response was considered average (and profitable). Three percent and higher called for Dom Perignon.

• I cannot believe it would be possible to precisely measure the increase in prune sales tracked back to that promotion.

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