Maurice Fights Back with Promotional USBs

As followers of last week’s Maurice the Marketing Manager’s story will know the Marketing Director of Global C.O.N.S. Ltd, Gerald Lightfinger dropped a massive clanger when he released thousands of promotional, helium filled balloons into the air over Royston in Hertfordshire hoping that he could entice people to purchase timeshare by offering them a 4 day break in exchange for the promotional key rings that were attached to the balloons.

Promotional Key Rings Exchange Fiasco

A few weeks after the promotional key rings exchange fiasco Gerald came sauntering into Maurice’s office, seemingly without a care in the world.  Considering that Maurice knew that Gerald had been hauled over the coals by his American project manager boss for losing the company thousands of pounds in bulk purchased airline tickets, Maurice was somewhat surprised to see him in such a buoyant mood.

“I’ve got a brilliant idea” Gerald said.  Inwardly groaning Maurice braced himself for more idiocy.  “You know what a mess we made of the balloon thing?” Gerald continued and Maurice wondered where the “we” figured into it, “Well what we need to do is stop being ashamed of what we sell”.

“How do you mean?” responded Maurice.

Promotional Gifts for Holiday Ownership

Gerald then began to explain how in all the Global C.O.N.S. publicity, advertising and literature timeshare was referred to as “holiday ownership”.  There was a very good reason for this, as Maurice was acutely aware.  Over the past few months more and more cowboys were jumping on the bandwagon of what originally was a very good investment.  Global’s timeshare resorts were in fact luxury units and well-built but when the cowboys had realised the sheer volume of money that could be made from it, the problems began.  Sub-standard units were being sold at anything between £4,000 and £13,000 per week for 51 weeks of the year.  The price varied usually on the season but in Tenerife since there was no winter, one apartment could conceivably sell for £555,000.   Building costs were around £25,000 so it didn’t take a genius to work out that if you had a resort with 200 apartments on it you were going to become multi-millionaires very quickly.  With high pressure sales tactics the cowboys launched themselves into selling poorly constructed apartments and the annual maintenance fees that owners were expected to pay became extortionate.  Hence the timeshare industry attracted the attention of the media and the ensuing bad press led a number of companies to drop the word “timeshare” from all their promotional gifts and literature.

“What we need to do”, said Gerald “is to have a drop card printed with a gauntlet on it, you know like the ones knights in armour used to wear.”  Maurice nodded hanging on his every word but not with enthusiasm.  “Then we’ll ask punters to take the Global Timeshare Challenge and sit through a timeshare demonstration, after which we’ll get their bums on the plane seats which will make up for last month’s little problem.”  As Maurice recalled the problem hadn’t been so little in that it had cost the company over £175,000 in lost airline tickets not to mention the cost of releasing all those balloons.

“So are you suggesting that we print the word “timeshare” on these drop cards?” Maurice asked.

“Yeah, that’s the whole point of it” Gerald replied slapping his hand down hard on Maurice’s desk.  “We’ve got a good product, we’re not cowboys and we shouldn’t be ashamed of what we sell to the extent that we can’t even mention its name.”

“With respect, I really don’t think this is going to work especially with so much bad press flying around at the moment.”

“That’s your problem Maurice; you are always so bloody negative.  That’s why I am the marketing director and you are only the manager”, Gerald sneered “let’s face it what do you know about direct mail and drop cards anyway?”  More than an ex Butlins redcoat Maurice thought.  “I’m off to the printers and when this is the roaring success that I know it will be, don’t think you will be taking any credit for it.  I’m going to get some promotional gifts sorted out too with the Global Timeshare Challenge printed on them.  Mark my words we’ll have a whole theme going here that will last for years.”

As Gerald strutted out of his office Maurice thanked God that he did not have responsibility for the direct mail and drop cards campaigns.  Although he’d grumbled about it in the past he knew that this latest crazy idea of Gerald’s would cause heads to roll and luckily on this one Maurice’s head was safe.  However, Maurice had been toying with an idea of his own over recent weeks that he felt had every chance of being successful.

Promotional USBs to get the Message Across

Maurice’s budget was £1 million pounds that had to stretch across all of his 14 marketing campaigns that included exhibitions which were always expensive, so although it sounded a lot of money in reality it wasn’t considering what he had to expend.  He’d always thought that posting a message in a bottle through people’s doors, with one of the range of promotional gifts inside the bottle, would work.   With a nice label of a beach and palm trees overlooking the sea he really believed that the bottles would be opened after they were delivered but because he didn’t handle direct mail, it wasn’t possibly to do.

Maurice looked at his budget and then decided to do something that might easily get him fired.  He juggled some figures around to free up some money and then he called a printer friend of his to get some quotes for small screw cap plastic bottles, of a size that would easily fit through a letterbox when encased in a cardboard tube.  Promotional USB Memory Sticks & Flash Drives had only just come on the market then and were quite expensive but he talked to another mate about that and arranged to have 50,000 promotional USBs printed with the message in a bottle theme and the company presentation loaded onto the flash drives.

On the day that Gerald had his 2 million drop cards delivered all over the North West of England, Maurice posted 50,000 plastic bottles in cardboard tubes, all containing promotional USBs to certain areas of Wales.  He had blown 20% of his budget.

Find out what happened next week.