To build a brand’s image, drive traffic and boost sales, a premium or giveaway must meet some essential criteria that convey the right values about a brand.
May 11, 2022 / 06:46 AM IST 
Image Courtesy: Shutterstock Most marketing professionals I know generally apply established marketing principles when planning ad campaigns, formulating positioning strategies, designing logos, or giving packaging briefs. It is not so when it comes to sales promotions.Most premium/giveaway purchases are gut decisions, often done on a whim or in response to a sales pitch. In many FMCG companies, marketing managers don’t have much of a choice: They have to choose from in-house product portfolio where there is an inventory problem. That is why you find toothpaste sold as a free gift with jams, and soaps with atta. I have heard amused competitors laughing on whether their jam and atta are so bad that the consumers need soap or toothpaste to clean up afterwards! I hear that often the premium decision is taken at a higher level in such diversified companies and also sometimes products, which are nearing shelf-life, are given away with sales promotion.Generally, however, marketers tend to select something that they personally like and that can be customised at a reasonable cost. As a result, premiums rarely work well. Few carry their marketing weight, and fewer still integrate well into the overall strategy. To build a brand’s image, drive traffic and boost sales, a premium or giveaway must meet some essential criteria that convey the right values about a brand:
- Premiums need to build rational involvement. This spurs customers to think and helps communicate a fact about the product. For instance, a packing and moving company may distribute attractive canvas tote bags embroidered with its logo, contact information and the tag line, “We help you move, no job too large or small!” Even this simple concept needs to be communicated, and putting it on a tote bag gets the point across by building rational involvement. A hair dye brand may give away hairbrush as a freebie since this is a requirement for many first-time users of the category. Again, this decision needs to be based on the promo strategy: Is the brand trying to lure new users or to switch competitor users? If it is the latter, the brand will have to work out something else for the promo. Perhaps give a booklet on the myths of using hair dyes since most users fear that hair dyes damage hair and are unhealthy.
- Premiums need to build emotional involvement. Rational involvement is only half the equation. Emotional involvement gets you feeling rather than just thinking, and that is where an exciting, intriguing, funny, surprising or beautiful premium comes in. A premium that feels like a nice gift and makes clients feel appreciated and important, taps into the need for emotional involvement. A product’s quality is vital to a good “feel.” If you give your customers a cheap ballpoint pen, they will not feel good about the gift. But give them something they would be pleased to receive as a birthday present, and you will evoke warm feelings and raise emotional involvement. A small FMCG company, making deodorants, used this emotional angle to reach out to the youth by giving a popular audio album with every deodorant, almost of the same price. The promo did wonders to the brand and took them momentarily to No. 3 spot nationally in terms of value sales during the three months of the promo.
- Premiums need to build involvement in the product, not just in the premium. It is not enough to generate good feelings about the premium itself. Those feelings have to extend naturally to the product, or else you have only marketed the premium. Once, I overheard two employees of a major accounting firm discussing a watch that the firm had given to one of them as a gift commemorating her 10 years of service.
Both women called the gift attractive and appealing, but they then badmouthed the company, complaining it was hell to work there. These internal customers made a clear distinction between their feelings toward the premium and the product it was supposed to represent – and the premium did nothing to improve their attitudes toward the company. - When selecting a premium, make sure it is associated with the product or positioning strategy on both cognitive and emotional levels, and that you can articulate these associations. For instance, imagine selecting a premium for large customers of a personal investment service. Your strategy might be to make sure the premium communicates the service offers financial advice for long-term investors wanting to build their wealth (the cognitive message) and that it helps people feel more secure about their retirement and their children’s future (the emotional message). But if you decide to offer, say, a briefcase, you have to ask yourself how it will communicate those messages and associate them with the brand. To make the cognitive impact, stock the briefcase with a complimentary copy of the company’s new investment advisory newsletter along with a form to fax back for a free six-month subscription. And if you pick a briefcase that is made of soft, buttery leather with a firm padded handle and old-fashioned brass fasteners that make a satisfyingly substantial click when you slide them home, the premium will represent the kind of emotional security – what your services represent.
A premium easily could go wrong by failing to communicate something informative about your brand or by failing to give the item the “right feel” for your positioning. The premium that truly works will cost a bit more, but it actually will have a substantial marketing impact.Download your money calendar for 2022-23 here and keep your dates with your moneybox, investments, taxes
M Muneer is the managing director of CustomerLab Solutions, a consulting firm.
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