Pick me! Pick me!

Driving its success, he believes, is the emphasis on having promotions that can potentially impact on people’s lives. He cites a recent example where a sales rep in Western Australia took him out into the car park to show off four new tires he was able to buy for his car.

"From my perspective you want to do something that influences someone’s home life as well as work life." Getting it right, he adds, is all the more important these days, given that changing market conditions have made it harder for companies to achieve 'breakthrough or penetration'.

"Convergence or consolidation has emphasised attempts to buy loyalty," Harman says. This has led Fuji Xerox to focus more on developing consistent, rather than ‘exciting’ programs.

"We’ve tended to go for very consistent rewards over time rather than the big hit trying to dazzle the market," Harman says.

Fuji Xerox reports that its more blockbuster promos in the past have provided only a small snapshot of participants, while usually tapering off quite quickly. The company used to offer trips as incentives, but is now almost entirely focused on gifts and prizes, which sales reps can acquire by accumulating cash rewards.

"Win a Porsche? -- I don’t know if I want to accept a liability," Harman says.

As far as Kyocera is concerned, though, its high-dazzle-factor Porsche deal has been one of its most successful promotions ever, and reports that it has received double the responses that it expected.

"We’ve had quite a large number of entries," says Anthony Toope, marketing manager Kyocera Mita Australia.

"Very simply the person who gets the highest amount of dollars paid to their card gets to drive the Porsche for a month." It runs until March next year. But the major carrot, or catch, depending on how you look at it is that the person who manages to keep that up for 24 months gets to keep it.

Toope says that not only has the Porsche promotion been very effective in pushing sales, but that it has also served to encourage more resellers to look at taking on the brand. "We want to establish more authorised resellers and we’re in the process of sending authorised reseller packages to the channel."

Kyocera MD David Finn touting the company's Porsche giveaway

In addition to the Porsche deal, Kyocera is looking at as many as 10 other programs over the next few months.

Included among these are the standard card, cash rewards schemes that mirror those offered by many other vendors whereby sales reps are presented, usually with a debit card, which then has money transferred over in line with their achievements.

"We laugh about the Porsche," says Lexmark A/NZ channel business manager Tim Champion. "If you’re the lucky person good on you."