Mint Condition

Money talks, and the government is raising its voice.

Every day, more and more consumers and commuters have a little Sacagawea in their pockets. Credit the U.S. Mint and its $40 million campaign to introduce the Golden Dollar. Partnerships with General Mills, Wal-Mart, entertainment venues, and metropolitan transit groups across the U.S. are making the seven-month-old coin ubiquitous. The Mint expects to ship more than one billion Golden Dollars this year – more than all the Susan B. Anthony dollars distributed in that coin’s 21-year life span.

Sacagawea’s marketing travels aren’t over yet, and she’s getting some company. The Mint keeps adding promotional partners as it ratchets up phase two of a three-stage strategy. Step one involved quirky TV and transit ads to raise awareness last spring; the current step two consists of coin giveaways to boost usage. In early 2001, the Mint will shift to maintenance mode for step three, quietly encouraging retailers to keep using the coins.

At the same time, the Mint’s sister agency, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, has begun promoting its new paper-money designs. The Bureau is pitching uncut sheets of bills as a novel premium for consumer promotions and business-to-business campaigns. It is also aggressively pitching marketers on commemorative items including an historical portfolio with two framed $20 bills, one of the old design, the other of the new.

Since consumers are already familiar with bills and don’t have a choice about carrying the new design (which will gradually replace the old), the Bureau’s marketing task is easier than pitching shoppers – and shopkeepers – on the Golden Dollar.

The Mint got a Congressional mandate to aggressively market the Golden Dollar to avoid a repeat of the painfully low acceptance of the Susan B. coin. “Congress recognized we had to do something different this time,” says Michael White, Mint spokesperson. “We’ve tried to introduce the coin the way a corporation would introduce a commercial product.”

Flipping Coins The Mint’s ultimate goal is to make the dollar seem as ordinary as, well, pocket change. “We want it to be more than just what the Tooth Fairy brings,” say Stan Collender, senior vp at Fleishmann-Hillard, Washington, DC, which handles the Mint’s campaign. That requires transactions. A deal with SFX Entertainment through September gives concert-goers in 10 SFX venues free tickets if they spend a set number of Golden Dollars this summer. The venues also give Golden Dollars for change. Wolf Trap Park, an outdoor theater center near the Capitol that’s run by the National Park Service gives discounts to riders using the new coin: The $3.50 fare falls to two Golden Dollars.

Transit campaigns expand to three new cities this fall after successful spring flights in Chicago, New York City, Philadelphia, and San Diego. The Mint tied in with a radio station in each market. The stations paid for coins, which were distributed to commuters along with brochures on the new dollar. In exchange, the Mint bought air time. The Mint chose stations that skew to younger listeners, Gen Y’ers who use more coins than older consumers (mostly for vending and transit) and don’t have the same bad memories of the beleaguered Susan B.

When General Mills called with a plan to put uncirculated 2000 pennies in Cheerios boxes, the Mint asked the company to include the Golden Dollar. The December-January campaign ended up with a new penny in 10 million boxes, a Golden Dollar in 5,000, and a certificate for 100 Golden Dollars in 2,273. General Mills handled in-house.

This summer, the Mint cut a deal with a major regional bank to use the Golden Dollar as the centerpiece of a six-month promotion giving away coins with each new account or CD purchase. The Mint expects to keep up promotions for another six to nine months, with more partnerships pending.

The Ghost of Susan B. Retailers are a crucial audience for the Mint, which approached Wal-Mart to get Golden Dollars in its registers for the coin’s Jan. 26 release. The Mint was playing hardball with banks, which didn’t want the dollar until March – if then. So it went to Wal-Mart “to show there was an alternative distribution channel,” Collender says. “It was a delicate situation.” In fact, the Mint talked with several retailers, but ended up only in Wal-Mart’s 2,900 stores. A similar deal with 7-Eleven didn’t go through because the Mint required a $1,000 per-store minimum, and 7-Eleven didn’t want to keep that much cash around.

“The Wal-Mart deal was very important because it got the coin directly into cash registers,” White says. “The conspicuous failure of the Susan B. was that it never penetrated retailers’ cash drawers.”

The coin got such attention in Wal-Mart that other retailers and bankers were soon ordering coins – so many, in fact, that the Mint bypassed the Federal Reserve to direct-ship to some banks.

As the Golden Dollar becomes commonplace, the Mint expects retailers to want to keep up with competitors. “Once one fast-food chain sees its competitor using it, they’ll adopt it too,” Collender says.

Consumer awareness helps push retail demand. TV and radio spots airing early March through mid-May “generated a lot of interest” from retailers, White says. Ads followed George Washington, the paper president in modern dress, using dollar coins in a vending machine, at a diner, in a tollbooth, and on a subway. Transit ads continue into fall via ad shop Dan Rosenthal, Bethesda, MD.

The Mint honed its marketing expertise on commemorative coin campaigns targeting collectors. Director Philip Diehl – who left the Mint earlier this year to run Zayles.com in Dallas – built the Mint’s marketing department over six years and set strategy for the Golden Dollar campaign. His replacement, John Mitchell, has followed through.

Paper Chase The Bureau of Engraving & Printing, meanwhile, began pitching marketers this spring. “Promotion is a new endeavor for us,” says spokesperson Antoinette Banks. “We don’t have Congressional legislative permission [like the Mint] to advertise.” A bill before the House of Representatives could change that: H.R. Bill 4096 would give the Bureau marketing authority similar to the Mint’s. In the meantime, the Bureau’s public service division develops “public education” campaigns that are executed by the Bureau of External Affairs staff. “We’re capitalizing on the fact that the currency’s changing” by offering companion premiums sporting the old and new designs, Banks says. The Bureau updated its brochures and school outreach program, dubbed “The Money Story,” and created posters and CDs under its tagline, “The Ultimate Way to Take Note.”

An engineering firm is mulling over the idea of giving uncut sheets of currency to employees who join its 401K program. J.C. Penney may put the sheets in its catalog as a novelty item. Marketers can use the sheets “any way they want, as long as they follow Secret Service guidelines for reproducing” bills, Banks says.

It seems that money is talking louder than ever.