Small Business Profile: A Sales Force Campaigners Inc. blankets the country with a staff of thousands to create better product brand identity and selling techniques for high-profile clients

By DAVID GREENBERG
Staff Reporter

Football fans taking advantage of free limousine rides from San Diego's Gaslamp Quarter during Super Bowl weekend will not only get to their hotel rooms safely but will take part in a marketing campaign for Sierra Mist soda.

In a strategy developed by Redondo Beach-based Campaigners Inc., the drink will be passed out as an alternative to alcoholic beverages.

The Super Bowl is among the events that Campaigners uses to create better brand recognition for products sold by companies that include PepsiCo, America Online, Samsung, FujiFilm and Universal Interactive. Campaigners contracts with these clients to teach retail salespeople how to better sell their products.

"We like to say we put the IQ into sales efforts," said Melissa Orr, president and chief executive of the five-year-old company. "It is often times cost prohibitive for them to do it themselves."

Campaigners uses a database containing the names of 3,000 "delegates" who train salespeople and give product demonstrations. Client billings range from $50,000 for a month-long sales and marketing campaign to more than $1 million annually. Most of the revenues come from 10 long-term clients.

"With all products that a retailer carries, there's no way a retail sales associate can self-train to become experts in all of the products," said Orr. "How will they know the strengths of a particular product or technology? That's where we come in."

After training, Campaigners' contract workers stage product demonstrations at retail stores, train in-store employees, and suggest areas of the store that will give products more visibility.

Brand awareness

It's all about placing a heavier emphasis on the clients' products, as opposed to the other brands. Reports are filled out on how many products were sold during an in-store promotion, and clients are kept updated on how the product is faring at each outlet against the competition.

Officials at Network Associates Inc. said they have seen a 5 to 20 percent sales increase in their anti-virus and security software at the stores that Campaigners has worked over the last year.

Orr's staff created an incentive program for Network Associates that pays cash bonuses to retail salespeople who reach a sales quota following in-store training.

"It changes the mindset of the person who is selling the product," said Diane Seghposs, Network's vice president of sales and marketing. "(Campaigners) educates and motivates retail sales clerks to sell our product as opposed to the competition."

Orr, 36, has been in sales ever since she was a child growing up near Kansas City, Kan. She ran a lemonade stand by age 8 and had a lawn mowing business by 12. She knew she wanted to own her own business after graduating from Emporia State University in Kansas in 1987 with a degree in communications. With $80,000 in savings, she started Campaigners in 1997 in a spare bedroom of her Manhattan Beach home. Last July, the company moved into its 6,000-square-foot space in Redondo Beach. The facility has a warehouse to hold sample products, training materials and sales brochures that are then forwarded to the field workers.

Sales tactics

Orr said she chose the company's name in the spirit of generating excitement for a product in much the way political consultants do for a candidate.

As part of a campaign to sell Universal Interactive's "Spyro the Dragon" video game, for example, Campaigners snared free airtime for an 8-foot-tall Spyro mascot standing outside the studios of the "Today" show and "Good Morning America" during a five-day media tour in New York. With the help of Universal's connections, the dragon also marched in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

"It's pure guerrilla marketing at this point," said Diane Ferris, a Campaigners worker who organized the media tour. "Getting on national TV is priceless for the client."

The idea for the Super Bowl limousine program - dubbed the "tipsy taxi" -came from a brainstorming session over martinis one night at the home of Megan McCaffrey, Campaigners' director of event marking and promotions. Her staff will have two limousines cruising the Gaslamp Quarter looking for partygoers in need of a ride to their hotels.

Campaigners' high-profile client list is notable in an industry dominated by bigger sales and marketing firms like Torrance-based U.S. Marketing & Promotions, Irvine-based BDS Marketing, Culver City-based Creative Channel Services Inc. and industry giant, Toronto-based Mosaic Group Inc.

"The retail industry has been going through a lot of consolidations both on the vendor and retail side," said Pete Prentice, event director of RetailVision, a division of Gartner, a Stamford, Conn.-based consulting firm. "(Orr) is helping manufacturers navigate through the field."