WESTFIELD, NJ: The Incentive Federation has launched a two-year, potentially dollars 1.2 to dollars 1.4 million PR campaign to raise the industry’s profile with customers.
WESTFIELD, NJ: The Incentive Federation has launched a two-year,
potentially dollars 1.2 to dollars 1.4 million PR campaign to raise the
industry’s profile with customers.
The federation is working with Chicago-based Slack Barshinger &
Partners, which has just launched the www. incentivecentral.org web site
and has begun a media-relations effort. On the site, incentive marketing
is defined as ’a promotional device that induces purchase or performance
on the part of a consumer, salesperson or dealer through the offer of
rewards in the form of merchandise or travel.’
Though relatively unknown to many companies - research done for the
federation has found that 74% of corporate America is not using such
incentives, according to group executive director Howard Henry -
incentives are still a dollars 23.7 billion industry.
Henry said that the federation began as a lobbying group, attempting to
act as an umbrella organization for a variety of industry associations
and trade shows. Its research has recently convinced members that
outreach efforts to corporate America have fallen short. ’Like most
trade associations, we can do better with PR than advertising,’ he
said.
Presenting case studies and describing successful programs will be a
central part of the PR effort. ’They’ve got to see case studies,’ Henry
said. ’The industry is too complicated to be explained in 30-second
ads.’
Slack Barshinger has featured several of these studies on the recently
launched web site, according to director of PR Stacey Reineking.
Subsequent media efforts will focus on major business centers such as
New York and Chicago, as well as in markets such as Minneapolis that
have been hotbeds of incentive use.
’There has never been a cohesive effort to gain awareness of the
industry as a whole,’ Reineking said. She added that initial program
expenditures will be in the dollars 250,000 range, with the majority of
that sum used for PR.
Henry said he expects the federation to spend between dollars 600,000
and dollars 700,000 during each of the first two years of the campaign,
with spending eventually growing to an annual level of dollars 1
million. While funding is currently coming from federation members, the
group hopes to secure additional PR funds from trade-show operators and
companies involved in the incentive business.
