Premium Incentives: Crystal Clear Persuasion

This year, New York City-based Society of Incentive Travel Executives (SITE) streamlined its annual Crystal Awards for outstanding travel incentive programs to focus more on the qualities of design, promotion, and delivery. Here’s a look at some of the 2001 winners, which were presented last December at SITE’s international conference in Lisbon, Portugal.

Category: Promotion & Communication

First Place: Spectacular by Nature

Company: Zurich Payroll Solutions, Fort Washington, PA

Agent: The Meeting Architects, San Francisco

The Meeting Architects had already announced a luxury cruise to Greece and Turkey as the reward in a sales-incentive campaign it was running for Zurich Payroll Solutions (a division of Zurich Financial Services Group). Then the program’s budget was cut in half.

Acting quickly, the agency polled participants and ascertained that they wanted “adventure, nature, and relaxation” at the new destination. The spot chosen was The Westin Resort and Spa in Vancouver, Canada.

A series of six teaser mailings sent to employees included a poster-sized photo calendar carrying program dates and rules, a package of salmon, vintage snowshoes, and a birch canoe filled with maple leaf-shaped chocolates.

The campaign, which required only five percent of Zurich’s total program budget, increased sales 33 percent in the promotional period — more than four times higher than goal.

Second Place: The Genuine Advantage

Company: Saab Cars USA, Norcross, GA

Agent: USMotivation, Norcross

Saab called on USMotivation to develop a national campaign that would improve customer service in dealerships while boosting sales of genuine Saab parts.

Working with a limited budget, the agency hatched Genuine Advantage, a concept that featured four programs tailored to different audiences: parts and service managers, parts and services salespeople, owners/managers of independent repair facilities, and dealer principals.

Direct-mail pieces delivered program guidelines and promotional items such as a CD designed like a speedometer. A final direct-mail push was aimed at dealer principals and featured premiums that symbolized the travel prizes available if they hit goal: a sports towel for a Super Bowl trip, a golf ball for a stay at an Orlando, FL, golf school, and a lure for a fishing trip to Alaska.

Saab Cars USA saw sales increase 15.5 times the cost of the nine-month incentive program.

Category: Creative Use of an Incentive Program to Solve a Marketing Problem

First Place: Compaq Bazaar

Company: Compaq Computer NZ

Agent: The Extra Mile Co., Auckland, New Zealand

Computer maker Compaq asked The Extra Mile Co. to address a lack of loyalty among computer resellers. Since independent computer dealers work with a variety of brands and all the top computer manufacturers run incentive programs, it was imperative that Compaq’s campaign stand out.

Extra Mile’s response was Compaq Bazaar, a cost-effective and user-friendly incentive program that let resellers participate online. Sales information entered into the system was automatically translated into points participants could redeem for 700-plus items in an online catalog. A working “barometer” on the program’s Web site showed how close employees were to winning one of 10 grand-prize trips to Turkey.

The program helped Compaq finish the year atop the market, as sales in non-traditional areas such as services, support, and financial services jumped 31 percent. Participation in competing programs fell 43 percent.

Second Place: Sales to the Series

Company: Simmons Co., Atlanta

Agent: MotivAction LLC, Minneapolis

Looking to motivate retail salespeople to recommend Simmons Co. brands, MotivAction put together a three-month campaign with a baseball theme that dangled a trip for two to the World Series and merchandise autographed by Hall of Fame players.

After making a sale, reps called a toll-free number. Interactive voice-response technology recorded the information, then randomly decided whether the call was a single, double, triple, home run, or instant-prize-winning grand slam. The hits earned with each call were compiled to keep a running count of the runs they produced; total RBIs determined the prizes earned. Each call doubled as an entry into a sweepstakes for the trip.

A total of 6,340 reps participated, doubling Simmons’ previous enrollment levels. The company’s return on investment was 100 to one.

Category: Trip Delivery

First Place: The Ultimate South African Experience

Company: IBM Enterprise Systems, Poughkeepsie, NY

Agent: Incentive Travel, Inc., San Francisco

IBM needed a campaign that would help it maintain market leadership, increase sales, and aid with employee retention. Incentive Travel devised the Ultimate South Africa Experience, which would send winners on a 10-day blitz through Zimbabwe, Botswana, Zambia, and Namibia.

The itinerary was designed to allow visitors to “connect” with the destinations and experience the local culture. The trip began with a surprise helicopter ride over Cape Town, and featured other excursions via canoe, jeep, and vintage trains. Destinations included castles, game parks, rainforests, and the bush. Among the highlights was a cocktail party held aboard a train passing Victoria Falls.

The trip not only inspired the IBM workforce to deliver a 17.4 percent increase in sales during the promotional period, but kept all 91 winners at IBM six months later.

Second Place: Club 2000

Company: Die Mobiliar, Zurich, Switzerland

Agency: Worldspan International, Zurich

Typical trip-fulfillment logistics are a cakewalk compared with some of the challenges facing Worldspan, which had the bright idea of booking Swiss insurance company Die Mobiliar’s biannual trip for top salespeople in a remote Alps village that bans cars — then created an entertainment program that required film crews, yaks, llamas, and mules to be brought along with the 100 participants.

Those rather unusual props were required to help Worldspan pull off the trip’s secret-agent theme: Before setting out on a day of hiking, biking, and riding on the aforementioned pack animals, the guests were given a “mission” to find a stolen vial of explosives. Players were divided into groups, each of which received a camera to capture their escapades. At the end of the day, each guest received a souvenir video of their adventures (edited by a professional film crew).