Who doesn’t love a GWP or ‘Gift with purchase’ - a free pair of socks with your cold tablets, a free cookbook with your cream cheese?
The good old GWP took an interesting turn recently when Stuart Ashton started thinking creatively.
You probably haven’t heard of Stuart, but he’d give a lot of professional marketers a run for their money.
Stuart and his wife Jean were selling their Mosman home and they thought it would be a good idea to throw in a little incentive, or GWP as we marketers call it.
The gift? A Rolls Royce car!
A free Rolls Royce sounds fantastic. RR has done a sterling job of attaching a luxury image to what is a very old-fashioned gas-guzzler. We don’t say ‘the Toyota of lawn mowers’ for example, we say ‘the Rolls Royce of lawn mowers’.
I wondered what this gold plated GWP was actually worth. A quick trip online told me his 1979 Rolls Royce was worth about $20 thousand. Not bad but hardly what you might expect to pay for true automotive luxury. And selling such a car on the open market could take months or even years.
The next stage in Stuart’s marketing campaign is a PR one. The free Roller story earned him a half page of free publicity on page 6 of the Mosman Daily where his regular house for sale ads were appearing. The synergies are almost too complete! Of course the story appeared online as well and I believe gained a little radio coverage too.
Stuart created a very neat marketing campaign on a very tight budget.
He provided a GWP that had the perfect balance of appearing to be very valuable while in fact not costing the marketer that much at all.
This appearance of value created an interesting PR opportunity that was followed in the very publication in which his target market was browsing.
Good media coverage, sure, but with all this ‘conversation’ did the house actually sell?
Yes.
Stuart and Jean not only sold the house, they got $150,000 above their reserve. A very good result in what is currently a flat housing market.
The final price was $2.25 million. So the cost of Stuart’s GWP and associated buzz represented only 0.008% of the total sale.
Maybe some of the big promotions agencies should give Stuart a call.
If you have a creative advertising problem call Tony Richardson on (02) 9929 0588 or visit Tony Richardson Advertising or TacticalTV.com.au
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