Futureshop

CHALLENGE

Our relationship with this electronics retailer began with a simple request: come up with a unique gift card design for the 2003/4 Holiday Gift card campaign. With the national (Canada) gift card program in its infancy and a lot riding on the creation of some killer creative that would help attain ambitious sales goals, we set to work.

APPROACH

We proposed that the cards should have characters to anchor the design and appeal directly to the consumer desire to give a unique-looking card, especially when they can’t decide on an actual product. The cool factor was enhanced with the use of silver and holographic foils to catch light and call attention to the merchandised cards. In addition, our research indicated that many people who purchase gift cards do so because they are convenient to give. With that knowledge, we developed a card carrier that fits within the standard merchandising fixtures yet transforms into a gift box (much like a McDonald’s pie box!), making it an extremely convenient gift to give.

RESULTS

The client loved the card designs and characters so much that we based the entire national in-store holiday décor program on the designs. Sales of the cards easily met and exceeded the aggressive sales targets. The carrier/box concept has been adopted on all other cards we’ve also created, and the character concept was renewed for the 2004/5 holiday season with the addition of a new Robot character.

We also went on to create a B2B direct marketing campaign to communicate to appropriate business decision makers the benefits of Future Shop Gift Cards over other employee incentive and client gift alternatives, and drive sales of the cards. Realizing that the target in this campaign wasn’t the end user, but rather the sales manager or HR decision makers looking for the most universal and adaptable item(s) to incent and motivate, we tapped into the uncertainty most feel about what people really want. Response for this campaign exceeded expectations and that of the previous campaign by over 10%. In addition, the number of respondents opting-in for more information, thus converting to live leads, was 40% of total response.