Making Lemons into Lemonade

This issue contains a great deal of discussion about the need for brand marketers to listen more closely to customers and tailor promotions to meet their needs. That doesn’t mean marketers should throw caution to the wind and appease consumers at the expense of all else.

So I’d like to take some space here to congratulate ConAgra’s Healthy Choice for covering both ends at once: giving their customers what they want while reducing the company’s risks.

You remember Healthy Choice, the brand from Omaha that turned cover subject David Phillips into a media star last winter by structuring its free-miles-with-purchase offer so that $3,000 worth of pudding bought a lifetime of free airfare? (Well, 1.25 million miles would be a lifetime supply for me.)

The offer “was better to exploit than anything I’d ever seen before,” says Phillips, a lackluster promotion follower but a dedicated miles-collector. After realizing the relative ease with which he could score a million miles (if you consider having $3,000 to spend on snacks “easy”), Phillips says he began exhorting others to join the cause, “but nobody else was willing to try. They said it was too much effort.”

Lucky for ConAgra. At any rate, the consumer packaged goods company (which recently added “Foods” to its name to sound more like a CPG giant) listened to its customers. If they want a million miles, Healthy Choice’ll give them a million miles.

Thus was born Feel Good to Go, a three-month campaign breaking next month that will give away miles not as rewards for purchase but instantly through on-pack gamepieces, and not a handful at a time but in increments of as much as, yep, one million miles. Among the more than 100,000 prizes, which range from 250 miles to 50,000 miles, will be 24 big winners. (Flair Communications, Chicago, will handle.)

ConAgra isn’t stopping there. Million-miler No. 25 will be crowned through an FSI-communicated sweeps breaking Jan. 7. No. 26 will come in a sweeps run through the soon-to-relaunch Healthy Choice Web site. In all, 65 million miles are available. And account-specific overlays will let retailers give away even more.

ConAgra wouldn’t discuss sales results from last year, but calls the promotion a success. At any rate, it proved that “our customer base enjoys the miles,” says marketing manager Shawna Forsberg. “David was really an anomaly last year. We had a lot of people [redeeming] for 200 to 1,000 miles.”

Despite the sniggers heard `round the industry (including one from our Bloody contributor), Forsberg says the publicity generated by Phillips’ quest was positive overall. “We had people calling us saying they were sorry they missed it.”

TV spots (from Grey Advertising, New York City), on-air radio promotions, and a p.r. campaign (from Fleishman-Hillard, St. Louis) should guarantee that fewer people miss it this time. And Phillips himself will join the publicity efforts, since “he technically is our first million-mile winner,” Forsberg says.

They want miles? They’ll get miles. And this year, there’s no chance some over-industrious wacko will blow the redemption estimates out of the water.

My wife Michele is eight months pregnant, so we’ve started getting the “New Mom” pitches at the house.

Last week’s mail brought a Madison Direct mailer with a variety of pertinent offers – free issue to Parents; free portrait at JCPenney; scads of Johnson & Johnson coupons; Disney, Winnie the Pooh, and Dr. Seuss continuity clubs; Fingerhut catalog request (with an image of a pregnant woman and an “Everything for your growing family” headline); and $1-off coupon for Friendship Cottage Cheese (which, in case you didn’t know, is “Naturally good for you and your baby”).

There were, of course, also generic pitches from the likes of Visa, an address-label maker, and a check printer. And there was a BRC announcing, “If you found this card in your package You Are A Winner!”

My prize, according to the card, was a “35-millimeter quickshot camera with 50 millimeter lens, flash adapter and tripod socket with fitted case, strap, and instruction booklet.” I’m very excited.

Of course, I won’t be able to get down to Carrollton, TX, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday to pick up the prize. So I’ll have to mail my address and $4.95 shipping and handling down to Direct Merchandising, Inc. and see what happens. I’ll let you know.