Incentive Marketing and Sales Promotion, March 1984 5

II II MEMBER OF THE AUDITABC BUREAU OF CIRCULATIONS

ISSN 0305-2230

IIIMCIciarenPublishersLimited

March 1984Number?

Contents

EditorMax CuffAssistant editorsRoy WillardAlan OwensAdvertisement managerTravis CrossleySales executiveJane HerbertClassified AdvertisementsSarah McPhai I

6 Promotions in Action10 Advertising Gifts12 Diary16 1984ISP Award Nominations19 Incentive Travel24 Guidelines for users:

Alan Owens on using IncentiveTravel

26 Guidelines for users:John Williams on SalesPromotion technique

30 Shell's Make Money returns32 Using AV to Motivate39 Tabloid Press look-alike Bingo

Promotions51 Sales Promotion and The Law

Incentive Marketing & Sales Promotion (incorporating Premiun-,Promotions). established in 1961, is published ten times annually byMaclaren Publishers Ltd on behalf of the proprietors, DistinctivePublications Ltd, PO Box 109, Maclaren House, 19 Scarbrook Road,Croydon CR9 1QH: Tel: 01-6887788. Telex: 946665. £1.50 per singlecopy. Incentive Marketing & Sales Promotion is also available on arigidly controlled circulation requested basis ONLY to qualifyingexecutives. For terms of control see index page. Back numbersavailable on microfilm from University Microfilms Ltd, High Wycombe,Bucks HP10 8HR.

Volume 19

INCENTIVE MARKETIAND SALESPROMOTION

Cover by Ekins, Bailey and Wood

Cover StoryEssex speciality print andpromotions company DonMarketing has inherited thelegendary Shell Make Moneypromotion which was 're-re-leased' last month. Page 30.

One begins to wonder just how observers of the future, morbidsocial historians and wistful aged grannies alike, will gaze back andjudge the 1980s.

We've had the Gay Twenties, the Depression Years, the years ofhope and restrained development in the Fifties and the boom andexcited exuberance of the 1960s. The Seventies were sobering yearswhen the world learned that the promise of the 1950s and theinnovative fulfilment of the 1960s had to be paid for.

Three years in and the Eighties seem to be a very dull decadeindeed.

Quite apart from the doom-laden and dismal political climatewhich seems to hang over us all like a grey pall, the 1980s seem tolack the adventure and optimistic zest for the future which markedthe first two decades following the fighting 'Forties.

Innovation, if and when it occurs, tends to be either imitative orladen with nostalgia for the halcyon days earlier in the century. Ourtelly screens these days are filled with some excellent drama - butnearly all of it is related to decades now viewed through rose tintedcathode ray tubes. And pop music, not everybody's taste by anymeans, seems to have stuck firmly in a groove dated 1969.

Twiddle the knob on a transistor radio and sooner or later outpour the tuneful sounds and lyrics of the 1960s.

Below the line activity, we tell ourselves, is the communicationdiscipline of the 1980smeeting the new tougher requirements of themarketplace. Well, some of us do. Not, it seems, the folk at Shell.

How terribly dull and 'Eighties' of the oil giant to re-release itsgreat hit of the 1960s. How equally dull and predictable for itscompetitors to launch a defensive price war.

Who knows - Esso might start giving away those wretched tigertails again. Still, the 1980s version of Make Money is not quite thesame as the 19608parent. ..

No envelopes this time, just fold-overs with perforations similarto those old-fashioned GPO Lettercards. And the prizes are bigger- one Aberdonian has already won £10,000 but refuses to let Shellget the valuable PR spin-off because he is afraid of getting beggingletters from the nation's tabloid newspaper readers.

Roll on 1990. Please.

What about thetiger tails?

30

FORECOURT PROMOTIONS

Incentive Marketing and Sales Promotion, March 1984

A return to the Sixties - an 18year old legendis back with us again; but times have changed andDon Marketing had to trim the old technique tomeet the needs of the more hard-bitten consumers ofthe 1980s.

Shell is backmaking money

The 1984 version of the famous ShellMake Money campaign has set alight thebattle among the petroleum companies,and could lead to a renewal of the sort ofpromotional campaigns that were sofamiliar in thelate 1960s.

In those days the petrol majors ran asuccession of massive campaigns, most ofwhich were based on collectables. Esso'sWorld Cup and FA Cup Centenary med-als, Texaco's regimental badges andCleveland's historic campaign medalswere examples. But Shell's campaign wascertainly the most successful, boosting thecompany's petrol sales by a staggering 30per cent, and becoming a sales promotionlegend in the process;

Shell is not expecting its current promo-tion to equal that sort of achievement.

For one thing, it probably could notcope with the extra gallonage, and foranother, the promotional environmenthas changed a lot since the 1960s. AsShell's retail advertising and servicesmanager Mike Beach puts it: 'There is alot more promotional noise rtqw thanthere was then, and consumers are rathermore hard-bitten than they were.'

Nevertheless, the promotion is on amassive scale, costing Shell more than£2m and involving the distribution ofmore than 60 million game pieces throughmore than 2,000 of Shell's sites. And itsattraction to the public, with more than amillion prizes and top prizes of £10,000(100 times bigger than the top prize in1966) should ensure massive public re-sponse.

Like the original game, the 1984versionis based on giving drivers half a note,printed like a banknote, when they visitShell stations.If they can match the note with another

half collected on a later visit to a Shellforecourt, they win the amount shown on

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the matching halves.No purchase is necessary.Filling station staff will give one game

piece per day to the driver of any motorvehicle, including motorcycles.

In 1966 the game caused something of afever among the public even leading to aspate of ads in the classified columns aspeople advertised for matching halves.This time, as well as the top £10,000prizes, there are others at £1,000, £100,£10, £1 and SOp.

There are some other importantchanges in the game, apart from the valueof the prizes.

Don Marketing, the Hornchurch basedpromotional games specialist, has struc-tured a much more sophisticated gamepiece, involving a high level of technolo-gical innovation to remove the risk offraud - so necessary with the large

amounts of money involved.Don also undertook the massive and

complex task of ensuring an even distribu-tion of winning notes - not easy when thenumbers are so great that, if the pieceswere stacked one on top of each other, thepile would be nine miles high!

The reasoning behind Shell's surprisemove back into promotions is explainedby Beach: .

'After so many years of price cutting,the past year has been relatively stablewhere the majors are concerned, eventhough some of the minors have continuedto cut hard.

'We hope for a continuing stability inthe coming year, and there is clearly somegrowth in the market. There is an increas-ing number of cars on the roads and petrolis now a good buy.'It takes fewer hours of work to earn the

Incentive Marketing and Sales Promotion, March 1984 31

money to pay for a gallon than it did 20years ago - even though that is not how itis perceived - and cars have better fueleconomy.'

At the same time as the market wasstabilising, Shell came to the end of amassive programme of rationalisation,refurbishment and conversion to self-service, so that it was in a strong positionto handle a big promotion successfully.

'In this situation', says Beach, 'we felt itwas important to re-establish the Shellbrand, following more than a decade inwhich we have not promoted it, eitherabove or below the line, other thanthrough price.

'Our advertising has been purely corpo-rate in nature.'

Beach explains that after so long a gapany promotion had to be a real block-buster.

'We looked at collectables, but theywere not big enough in impact, and MakeMoney has the advantage that it is intrinsi-cally ours and. there is lots of residualaffection for it among the public.

'We could not find anything better, andwe finally accepted the argument DonMarketing had originally put to us in itsfavour as much as two-and-a-half yearsago.'

There are, of course, a number ofimportant differences between the 1966and 1984 games.

In the first place, where the half notewas contained within an envelope in theearlier version, this year it is printed onthe inside of the envelope, which repre-sents a big cost saving.

But Don managing director JohnChambers lays more emphasis on theimproved security of the new version.

He explains that nobody had used asimilar type of envelope game for manyyears, and this meant that its security hadnot been tested against the much greater

Don Marketing managing director JohnChambers with the new Make Mon.ey.

sophistication of today's consumers.'We had to be sure that, with all the

electronic gadgetry at their disposal, theycould not find a way of beating the system.And with the big increase in the value ofthe top prizes that was an importantconsideration. '

That is why the game incorporates eightdifferent security devices. For instance,the smaller denomination winners arebeing paid out on the forecourt (those of£100 and upwards are being handled byDon), and the Shell dealers can checktheir validity by activating a special fugi-tive ink incorporated in the note.

And where the big denomination notesare concerned, a special secret code willeven make it possible to trace the area ofthe country in which they were handedout.

The envelope can be opened only bytearing along perforated lines, and, toprevent see-through, special printingtechniques were used. The reverse isprinted in silver, and the inside front of theenvelope incorporates a special designthat makes it impervious to light.

Complex mathematics and printingarrangements were necessary to ensurethat the right number of winning notes wasprinted, and that they were distributed insuch a way as to ensure that each fillingstation gets a fair share of winners. Withmore than 60 million game pieces thiscalled for a high level of expertise.

The printing operation itself was carriedout under conditions of tight security.

The plates for the winning half noteswere held in the printer's local bank, andnever left the sight of Don Marketingdirector Don Redhead from the moment

they left the bank right up to the momentwhen the necessary number of halves hadbeen printed and the plates were brokenup.

Both Shell and Don Marketing weredelighted that a British printer, Dobsonand Crowther, was able to do this sophisti-cated work, even though, at one stage, thethreat of a national printing dispute putthis in doubt.

Don Marketing chairman John Dono-van, who has extensive experience ofsourcing print requirements from all overthe world, reckons that very few com-panies could have coped with either thetechnical requirements or the time press-ures of the Shell job.

'You cannot go to just any printer andexpect it to turn the tap on for a job likethis,' he explains.

The promotion is being backed up by anational TV advertising campaignthrough Ogilvy and Mather that is aimedat reaching 80% of motorists at least fivetimes on average. This is being supportedby full pages in the popular nationaldailies and by a £V4mcampaign on radio,aimed at catching motorists while they areon the road.

During the promotion, there will alsobe press advertising and a public relationseffort announcing the big winners. Pre-sentations will be held on the forecourts ofthe fillup stations that have given away thebig winners, and these events will besupported by local TV and press coverage.

The campaign is being reinforced by anincentive campaign based on Bonusbondswhich will be awarded to staff on retailsites. When they payout a prize to amotorist, they write their name on the halfnote and send it in to the appropriate Shellregional office to take part in a weeklydraw. _

And, of course, all participating sitesreceive a full POS kit induding a poster tomount on a free-standing sign, hose nozzlestickers, stanchion flags, shop door stick-ers, cash till wobblers, change mats, staffbadges and car stickers to give away.

Mike Beach is hoping that, after somelimited initial price cutting by competi-tors, the battle will settle down to apromotional battle rather than a pricebattle.

He would simply like the best marketerto win, and that promotions will offer away out of the cripplingly expensive cutsof recent years. The cost of even a majorpromotion like Make Money is far smallerthan taking pence off petrol, and MakeMoney should bring some fun back to thedriver's life. 0