SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR |  RSS | | REPRINT
|
The Search for the Golden Gadget
January 10, 2008
How to find the greatest electronic gifts
By Ben Chapman
Great motivators never hit the snooze button, even though parts of the business might keep them up at night.
And, probably no category of incentive merchandise causes more insomnia than electronics. New products hit the motivational market with mind-blowing speed and are quickly redeemed in a never- ending loop. Every day, the gadgets get better, smarter. They do more. And meanwhile, prices are dropping—really fast. Your challenge is to stay aware of what's coming next and where it's coming from. It's a tall order, for sure, but it can be achieved. And by offering the right electronics at the right time, you'll be a more effective motivator.
Why Tech Matters
Ask any expert, and you'll hear the same: Electronics is the sweet spot in the wide world of incentive merchandise. Winners revel in the trophy value of the latest high-tech gadgets and also appreciate the utility of electronic goods in their everyday lives. Buyers and managers respond by including electronics whenever possible.
"Technology has always been the number one redemption category," says Ira Ozer, vice president of business development for Hazelwood, Mo.–based Meridian Enterprises.
For example, Ozer says, participants in a sales incentive program at New York–based Information Builders, a global business intelligence software company, redeem more than 70 percent of their award points for electronics.
"There's so much innovation, and the products are always changing," observes Rick Blabolil, president of Chicago-based Marketing Innovators. "New electronic gadgets keep coming to the market, and the appetite for new trendy items is almost insatiable. It's like each progressive generation that hits the workforce is looking for more out of technology."
Two of his most enthusiastic clients come from different industries. One is a technology manufacturing company and the other is a financial institution. In both cases, the employees are "very progressive young people who want to stay on the bleeding edge," he says. "They're after the latest cell phones and digital cameras. And then three months after they get it, they're waiting for the next one."
Blabolil faces a challenge common to all incentive managers who seek to use electronics in motivational programs. He must keep up on the latest products coming to market and make sure they are offered as incentives. He's keeping up with the electronic Joneses.
 How to Keep Up
The dizzying pace at which new technology hits the retail market is what makes the job fun for leaders in incentive merchandise, because they know how to keep track. These experts don't just contend with technological change; they feed off of it, they love it. And they use a variety of methods for staying ahead of the curve. They keep close to their vendors, to get that insider knowledge about changes before they happen. They attend electronics trade shows, where new products are launched and deals are made. And they follow the press.
"How do you keep up? You work your relationships with your vendors," says Todd Bendtschneider, a veteran merchandise manager at Chicago-based Hinda Incentives. Example: A strong relationship with suppliers paid off for Hinda in September of last year when Apple switched to flash memory technology in its digital music players, effectively doubling the storage capability of the gadgets, or halving the price, depending on how you look at it.
"Apple is very careful about how they go to market. They keep things quiet, but our authorized distributor was able to advise us that a change was occurring and about when," Bendtschneider relates. The information was enough for Hinda to get ahead of the curve of changing technology. "Our strategy was to run at minimum inventories of old products, and as soon as we had total information on the new products, we placed our orders immediately. We shipped some of those new products the same week they hit the market."
The result? Hinda had the latest technology available for its clients, right on time. "We were able to transition to the new technology and ship for one of our most valued consumer loyalty programs," says Bendtschneider. "They were delighted. People were actually getting the new, more robust products, even if they had ordered the old ones."
Bendtschneider's like a hound sniffing out the latest technology trends, and his nose goes wild at trade shows like the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), which he's attended for 20 years. Held every January in Las Vegas, the trade event's the place where the major electronics makers come to debut their ideas for new products, get feedback from the big retailers and decide what to roll out in the coming year.
Think of it as an intelligence-gathering mission. "We've never cut a purchase order at the Consumer Electronics Show," admits Hinda's Bendtschneider. "The value is seeing what the manufacturers have new for the season. You see a lot of black boxes—tentative products not in production yet. But once the electronics makers sit down with the big retail outlets at CES, they make decisions on what new technology they're going to put into production." And that's exactly the sort of information that savvy incentive buyers use to stay ahead of the technology juggernaut.
Beside keeping cozy with vendors and listening up for the buzz at the electronics trade shows, gadget gurus gather information on important changes in consumer electronics by following the press. "The way I stay ahead of the curve is I read everything I can get my hands on," states Mark Kramer, senior merchandising manager at Maritz Motivation in St. Louis. "It requires a little bit of research. But there're a lot of great magazines, a lot of great Web sites, and even a lot of great TV that showcases the latest technology and gives a sneak preview of what's about to come out." These days, Kramer's reading list includes magazines (Consumer Reports, Stereo Review) and Web sites (CNET.com, g4tv.com), and he scans the cable television channels G4 as well as HSN and QVC.
What's Hot Now
Get a bunch of gadget-loving geeks together to talk about the hottest incentive electronics, and you'll find that they're mostly excited about the same technologies: home theater, portable digital music players, digital cameras, and Global Positioning Systems (GPS). These are the big categories in incentive electronics, and things are changing rapidly in all of them, fast enough to keep the buyers' nimble minds hard at work to stay ahead of the curve.
In the home theater segment, a few developing stories are changing rapidly enough to hold buyers' (and consumers') attention. High-definition, flat-panel technology is definitely the call when it comes to television, with LCD expected to emerge as the superior technology to first-generation plasma sets. "We now know that LCD flat-panel televisions are projected to be 75 to 80 percent of the market over the next five years, as opposed to plasma, which will be just 20 to 25 percent," says Maritz's Kramer. And of course, the prices for those sets, even from leading makers like Sony, Panasonic and LG, continue to fall rapidly, with some 40-inch-plus sets now inhabiting the sub-$1,000 price category.
The most controversial area of home theater is DVD, with two formats competing for supremacy in the world of high-definition discs which recalls the 1980s battle of VHS versus Beta. Both Blu-ray and HD-DVD are attractive to early-adopting incentive recipients who want the latest technology, and they're expensive, with both types of players coming in at around $500. Incentive buyers say the savvy bet is to offer both types of players as rewards, until the score's settled.
It's no secret that Apple rules the digital music market, and recent developments in the company's line of portable media players are making incentive buyers salivate. "They've really developed a sophisticated assortment of products at a broad spectrum of price points. I think they're penetrating pretty much any demographic you can think of," says David Peer, senior director of merchandise and fulfillment at Minneapolis-based Carlson Marketing. "There's a lot of interest in the new products, like the iPhone, and the iPod touch, which is similar to an iPod, but with Web-browsing capability. And they've really defined their iPod lineup with the Shuffle, the nano and the traditional models." Also look for related products like headphones and speakers from Bose. But even though the genius-bar behemoth controls about three-quarters of the market in digital music players, don't count out the underdogs yet, who are continuously releasing new gadgets in an effort to knock the king off the throne, says Peer. "Sony was the grandfather of the portable audio, and I don't see them standing idly by while Apple dominates."
Few categories in electronics are as dynamic as the digital camera segment, where new products hit the market every 90 to 120 days, and prices are falling just as fast as megapixel counts are rising. Nowadays, most incentive shutterbugs are angling for resolutions of eight or nine megapixels, says Peer, and familiar brands like Canon, Nikon and Fujifilm continue to dominate. "The lines like Fuji and Canon are setting the pace for us," says Peer. "They're working on new features like smarter zooms and face recognition and centering technologies that will really help you create more attractive pictures."
 GPS gadgets, which allow users to locate themselves on the globe and also provide tracking capabilities and offer directions, have long been a favorite electronic incentive, particularly in the sales force cohort. The trick is to watch out for price reductions and new features from top makers like Garmin, Magellan and TomTom, who are continually rolling out better, less expensive models. In addition to being rewards that motivate, GPS units can improve the productivity of salespeople who travel by car, says Peer. Sounds like a win-win situation.
Resources
Hinda Incentives
www.hinda.com
Maritz Motivation
www.maritz.com
Carlson Marketing
www.carlsonmarketing.com
Meridian Enterprises
www.meridian-incentive.com
Marketing Innovators
marketinginnovators.com
LG
incentiveconcepts.com
Sony
motivation.sony.com
Panasonic
www.panasonic.com
Apple
store.apple.com
Bose
www.incentiveconcepts.com
Nikon
www.nikonusa.com
Canon
www.info-now.com/canon
Garmin
www.computer-incentives.com
Tom Tom
www.tomtom.com
Magellan
www.psakc.com
Fujifilm
www.gopremco.com
|
SAVE | EMAIL | PRINT | MOST POPULAR | RSS |
|
|
| Back to Incentive Index |
|
|
