Also in this report:

– How to motivate the troops: Getting the most out of employees for the least p.17

– Frigidaire drops rebates for brand-name premiums p.19

– Cap’n Crunch’s Spider-Man blitz: Quaker Oats puts on promo push of heroic proportions p.22

It was just a happy coincidence, really.

Ferrero Canada just happened to be looking for a premium to encourage purchases of its Ferrero Rocher brand of chocolates.

Tony Selina, the Toronto-based company’s group product manager, confectionery, just happened to have received a present packaged in a handsome gift bag – a simple but stylish touch that impressed him no end.

Selina took the gift bag into a brainstorming session with the Ferrero Canada marketing team, where it was found to be a ‘perfect fit’ with the company’s needs.

Ferrero, he says, wanted a premium that would carry a brand message, have visual appeal, provide high perceived value and create an opportunity for the firm to add value to its product in-store.

And it had to accomplish all this at a manageable cost.

Ferrero’s decision to offer a gift bag to purchasers of its 200-gram box of chocolates demonstrated that sometimes the simplest approach can be the most effective.

The promotion was introduced as a test project in two major accounts at Christmas 1994.

So successful was the test that the gift bag and the tissue wrapping paper that came with it were rolled out to all 400 Ferrero Rocher accounts across the country in time for the Christmas 1995 gift-giving season.

The bag, a smart varnished-paper affair with twine handles, all in Ferrero Canada’s corporate green, tied in with the company’s overall marketing strategy, Selina continues.

‘A bag like that, along with the display that it comes in, gives the company the opportunity to add impact [to the brand] in-store.’

The message the gift bag reinforced in consumers’ minds was one of quality, says Selina: a high-end product, suitable for gift-giving.

‘If you want consumers to buy the product as a gift, give them the vehicle to give it in,’ he says.

Richard Brightling of Toronto-based Poirier & Brightling Marketing, which worked on the promotion with Ferrero, says the company was seeking to create a point of difference between itself and others in the furiously competitive confectionery market.

The promotion borrowed a page from the marketing textbook of the cosmetics business, where this kind of elegant gift bag is often used to encourage purchases.

A high-end chocolate such as Ferrero Rocher clearly shares similarities of image with many fragrance and makeup products.

Brightling says the Ferrero Rocher product skews heavily female (approximately 80%, in fact), although at Christmas many men buy the chocolates as a gift for wives and girlfriends.

The gift bags were displayed at store level in a self-merchandiser alongside the chocolates. Toronto-based supplier Impro handled production of the bags.

While there has been tv advertising for the Ferrero Rocher brand, all promotion for this particular campaign was done in-store.

There was a ‘significant’ trade element to the program, adds Brightling.

It involved a contest to encourage the trade to display Ferrero Rocher chocolates and some of Ferrero Canada’s other brands. Winners received mountain bikes, weekend trips out of town and a variety of other prizes.

Aside from helping the company sell more product, the promotion has garnered greater brand recognition for Ferrero Rocher and enhanced its image, Brightling says.

It has also demonstrated to the trade that that Ferrero Canada is prepared to help them sell through a product, by providing the merchandising tools and a good display.

While pleased with the success of the promotion, Selina says it has run its course, and won’t be repeated. A new one is now in the works.

With a product like chocolates, marketers have to keep moving, he says.