Crying Tomatoes, Laughing Customers

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A ONE-TENTH OF 1 PERCENT RESPONSE RATE isn't much to write home about — unless responding entails going to extraordinary measures. Over 300 consumers did just that when outdoor gear marketer Moosejaw Mountaineering asked for crying tomato artwork.

Why they went out of their way is slightly harder to quantify. It probably wasn't 100 Moosejaw Rewards points, worth about $1. Rather, they probably wanted to be further woven into the crazy quilt that is Moosejaw's marketing strategy — an approach known internally and externally as “The Madness.”

Just For Fun “We were doing community [marketing] before people cared about it,” says Moosejaw co-founder Robert Wolfe about his 18-year-old company. “When we first started Moosejaw, our entire goal was to make it fun. And the demographic that engages with us (high- school and college students, as well as outdoor enthusiasts) does buy the products we sell.”

The rewards program offers 10 points for every dollar spent with the company. “The nice thing is that [rewards points] become a currency we can use for engagement activities,” says Eoin Comerford, vice president of marketing.

Pretty much any Moosejaw consumer touch has an irreverent side, including the way the phones are answered with a mock moose call incorporated into the company name.

Initially the request for crying tomato art went into a 30,000-copy run of its spring catalog, which was used as a package stuffer; the company's big mail drop is in the fall, leading into the start of its busiest season. But the call then ran as undertext in a message to all 300,000 names in its e-mail file.

Moosejaw isn't tracking the specific ROI of its crying-tomato campaign. But market research has shown that 40% of customers who are highly engaged have placed at least four orders with the company. Among customers who are not highly engaged, that percentage falls to 15%.

Why crying tomatoes? “If there was a rational reason, we probably wouldn't have done it,” says Comerford, before adding that executives at the company do have something of a food-in-humor fetish.

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