Supermarkets discover direct marketing ... works!

While judging the best supermarket ads of the year, the author spotted a category that was nonexistent a few years ago--direct mail. Here's what he learned about these smart marketers.

A funny thing happened on the way to judging the best supermarket ads in the United States this year. There were the usual categories of Best Color Ad, Best Institutional Ad, Best Price Ad, Best Nutrition Ad, but wait, look--another category with as many entries, called Best Direct Mail Ad.

What was a nonexistent category a few years ago has found its place among the traditional ways for supermarkets to advertise.

There were two major competitions this year:

* Women's Day magazine presents their annual best-advertising awards at the annual Food Marketing Institute's giant convention in May.

* The National-American Wholesaler Grocer's Association--the association of food wholesalers--bestows their winners at their annual advertising conference.

Some of the supermarkets entered both contests. Here's some of the most effective entries we saw while judging the quality presentations:

The Corporate Gift Certificate

Where is it written that supermarket advertising should only be business-to-consumer? Why not business-to-business? That's the decision made by Rainbow foods in Hopkins, Minnesota. In-house they designed an attractive step-down accordion-fold mailer that listed "12 Ways To Help Your Business Grow With Gift Certificates From Rainbow."

The brochure was printed in the attractive corporate colors of slate and tan and mailed to specifically targeted businesses in their area. The introductory copy told how businesses can reward employees with food gift certificates from Rainbow as incentives, to say "thank you" to a new client, as gifts for birthdays, retirement or special occasions or for local charities to use for fund raising.

Rainbow offered the gift certificates customized with the firm's name and/or with a choice of items. ("If you want a gift certificate that says '$100 worth of Hershey's kisses'...no problem.")

The last panel had a sketch of the gift certificate and offered the customer printing, free delivery and discounts of 4 percent on orders of $1,000 to $5,000.

"We did the promotion twice. Mailed 5,000 for the holiday season and another 5,000 we mailed out during the year," said D'Arcy Teasley, assistant vice president of advertising. What was customer reaction? "Lots of positive feedback," says D'Arcy.