Mother’s Day in Meal Assembly - Or Maybe Not
Here is a phenomenal example of the second to none marketing campaigns at work within the meal assembly industry. That’s right ladies and gentlemen here’s how those marketing dollars your pay every month are working for you.
Where are other Meal Assembly Kitchen (MAK) Mother’s Day Promotions?
The struggling MAK franchise segment should have been aggressively promoting creative Mother’s Day themed options. With the exception of Entree Vous, search results for Mother’ Day Meal Prep promotions on GoogleNews were nonexistent:
Dream Dinners Mother’s Day: 0
Super Suppers Mother’s Day: 0*
Supper Thyme USA mother’s day: 0
My Girlfriend’s Kitchen mother’s day: 0
Dinner by Design: 1 Chicago Tribune
* Story of Green, OH Super Suppers closing came up
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May 6th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
When I do the same search I came across this promo on the Dream Dinners website that doesn’t exactly fall into the “slouch” of a promo category:
Dream Dinners Give-Away on the Dr. Phil Show!
Don’t miss the Dr. Phil Mother’s Day show on May 9th! Dream Dinners provided gift certificates for the entire audience. Thank you, Dr. Phil, for letting Dream Dinners participate!
Don’t know about you, but I’d love to get a mention on Dr. Phil. Someone called for an Oprah appearance before and this is, I suppose, the second best thing.
May 6th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I really wouldn’t call that a promo, rather than just advertising for Dream Dinners in general. The people in the audience may get something for free but that doesn’t do anything for Mother’s Day on the East Coast or in the Midwest. It could be beneficial for the company in the long run, but this won’t do anything for the Mom’s in my neighborhood.
Plus I wonder how much this is costing Dream Dinners versus how much each store has to put up to honor those certificates? If the owners are paying into a marketing fund AND they money is coming out of their pocket because of the certificate, then they are getting hit twice.
May 6th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
Okay, that’s fair.
I might be stupid, but I don’t really expect a huge lift in business because of Mother’s Day. I might be missing Sean’s boat (wouldn’t be the first time), but trying to compete with the gazillions of dollars being spent by other retailers and restaurants to get mommy gift money just doesn’t seem like a wise proposition. Maybe offering a free something or other to the customers if they come in this week (maybe come in and buy something) as a customer appreciation deal doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Even offering a last minute emailed surprise coupon/promo in honor of mother’s day (to anyone who wears a skirt) to gin up a little traffic to take advantage of impulse purchases by the current customer base (moms).
I’m torn between trying a promo to bring traffic this week or waiting to promo-tize the week before Memorial Day- when everybody (including women) will be buying.
I think I saw someone in another comment allude to the fact that the store owners get reimbursed food costs for the gift certificate redemption. I just confirmed that I’m stupid because I wouldn’t have thought that Dream Dinners would have also had to pay the show to give away gift certificates to everyone in the audience. I’m soooo out of touch with how the real world works.
No offense to anyone who thinks the Dr. P thing is dumb, but there are a lot of stores who’d pay a pretty penny to get a mention like that. The proof will most definitely be in the pudding…I’d love to see the web hits to their site on the 9th- by moms, not for moms.
May 6th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I think the Dr. Phil mention will actually be more of a benefit for us DD owners on the east cost. We don’t have to honor any GCs because there will be few, if any, ladies in the audience from our neck of the woods but there will be a national mention of DD on a show that is watched by many people in our area. DD was featured in a great TIME magazine article and that generated some new customers for us. I agree with dinnerzen I am not sure how much we can compete on Mother’s Day with all the other more glamorous gift options I mean really - what do you say …”thanks for making us dinner mom/wife, here is a gift certificate so you can go make us some more.” May as well just buy her a new vacuum cleaner. If mom is already into DD mother’s day wont make a difference either way.
May 13th, 2008 at 7:30 am
SOOOOO…..did Dr. Phil’s gift cert promo bring in the promised windfall for all you DD’ owners?
Was your Mother’s Day sales just the best ever?
Anyone want to share? stillhopeful how about you?
May 13th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
I’d settle for increased hit rates on my website and calls to the store following Dr. Phil…
May 15th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Any news on this? Did some stores see an increase in customer interest of the concept since the show? Have people been mentioning it? Just curious on what the impact has been or is it too soon to tell?
May 17th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
They are beating down the doors!! Had to turn people away!
Even my regulars haven’t mentioned it and when I mention it to them they give me a blank stare.
Here’s hoping that the next Dr. Phil mention later this month will send at least one new person my way.
May 19th, 2008 at 4:41 pm
Really, no one? For cripes sake, if that isn’t going to pique curiosity, what will?
May 19th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
As a post script…I would add that our walk in sales were incredibly slow the week preceding mother’s day (weather wasn’t the best) EXCEPT for that Friday. So, my guess is that all 20 of his regular viewers were at my store. Or, perhaps at the over crowded mall or on the road travelling home or thereabouts. Maybe bad timing? Nobody saw anything? How do you evaluate the effectiveness of that type of effort? Was there some sort of promotion that was supposed to compel people to take action?Call Dr. P watchers and ask them if they remember the mention?
May 21st, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I had a feeling going with Phil wasn’t really a step in the right direction. We won’t go into the merits of Dr. Phil, but I don’t really get the impression he caters to the meal assembly crowd…
It would certainly be interesting to know how much was spent on that promo versus how much it brought in…