When the Walt Disney World Resort's silver anniversary approached, Sears, Roebuck & Co. [S] decided to do something special --partner with them and share in their celebration.
Sears and Donnellon Public Relations, both located outside of Chicago, both worked with Disney to create "It's A Big Card After All Tour," a nationwide publicity campaign designed to simultaneously promote Sears' and Disneyland's new partnership and marketing efforts.
The Disney resort's anniversary kicked off in September, and will be celebrated throughout next year until December 1997. Sears and Dsney ran the anniversary card tour in conjunction with their jointly created "It's a Big Sale After All" and "Vacation of a Lifetime" PR campaigns.
The card tour was the perfect way for Sears and Disney to begin their long-term business partnership, since Sears sells a great deal of Disney merchandise, and Sears customers (families) are potential seekers of Disneyworld vacations. Disney gets nationwide publicity in the Sears stores and on the week-long card tour, and Sears gets a reason to celebrate, draw in customers and hopefully raise in-store sales.
Donnellon created the 16-by-12-foot anniversary greeting card, which traveled to six major cities from September 15-28, 1996, and for every signature collected, Sears donated $1 to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America.
Sears and Donnellon researched the major markets to which the anniversary card would travel. Disney World's visitors mostly come from the East Coast, while Disneyland's crowd is drawn from the West Coast. The markets had to be big cities, especially where both Sears and Disneyland had previous strong sales figures.
The anniversary card made its way around the country, stopping in six cities at various malls and sites, at which there would be individual signing events.
The objectives of the plan were to generate awareness of the Sears/Disney partnership, build store traffic through an engaging community relations component, complement brand positioning of Sears as a fun, attractive place to shop and promote Sears' in-store promotion two-week "Vacation of a Lifetime" sweepstakes, and "It's a Big Sale After All" campaign.
During the card tour, Sears customers could enter to win one of 135 family vacations for four to the Walt Disney World Resort. The group would take their trips in January 1997 during the Walt Disney World 25th anniversary celebration.
The "big sale" offered a Disney stuffed animal as a special purchase-with-purchase deal for all Sears customers buying $25 of Disney merchandise during the card promotion.
Getting Everyone Involved
Donnellon sent out press releases and media alerts to the six major market media outlets and set up interviews with TV stations and newspapers for the day before the event signings in each of the cities.
It was important that the Sears employees at the 345 locations nationwide be updated on the promotion planning since they would be participating. Employee communications via e-mail messages from Donnellon kept Sears employees prepared for the big day of local marketing efforts, set for Sept. 21.
Donnellon created how-to kits for each of the Sears stores, in which employees were told to contact local media, and pitch the promotion with the supplied press releases and media alert templates. Vanetia Rogers, manager of marketing and PR for Sears, said that, "we empowered the stores to make local promotions as big or small as they wanted. We gave them ideas, and gave them the basic things they needed to simply celebrate, but it was all up to them."
"I was completely surprised by how much the employees backed the promotion. They were totally behind it," added Rogers.
The small anniversary cards signed by customers at all of the Sears stores will be assembled together and presented to the resort in January 1997, at the Disney resort celebration.
The Partnership Succeeds
Each of the 345 Sears stores were surveyed via e-mail, and of the 60 stores that have responded so far, 90 percent said they thought the campaign went extremely well. The other 10 percent said yes, the promotion was good community relations, but it didn't have a positive effect on sales. In addition, more than 22 percent of the respondents directly attributed sales increases to the PR program.
The anniversary card signatures received in the major market city tour, 65,000 as a result of local Sears in-store promotions, included local city mayors, Chicago White Sox legendary pinch-hitter Minnie Minoso, 1996 Olympic Wrestling Medalist Matt Ghaffari, and football players from the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions. Representatives and members of local Boys and Girls Clubs also came out for the signings, and donation checks totaling $10,000 were given to club representatives.
PR efforts generated over 18 TV placements, on ABC, FOX, CBS and NBC affiliates and 20 print placements in such publications as The Chicago Tribune, The Detroit Free Press and New York Newsday.
Patti Morrison, vice president of Donnellon, said the campaign attracted the media and the public because it had a cause-related marketing hook. Tying the promotion in with a charity and giving it a local news angle boosted Sears' reputation as a company that cares about its community. "The only thing I would've changed is to get a celebrity in there to do some promoting for us," she said. (Sears, 847-286-2500; Donnellon Public Relations, 312/553-1240)