Our Mission:
To create an “Oscar Worthy” gift bag for a cast of thousands about to descend on a medical conference in Vegas.
Challenge I:
To find a Best Picture DVD Collection under $20.00— then find enough of them in stock, in one place at the same time.
- Our first thought— Amazon. Unfortunately, they only let you buy a few at a time. Otherwise, you are stuck with resellers—an unreliable lot at best.
- Next thought—DVD wholesalers/distributors—entities that sell to Blockbuster and the like. We called several but couldn’t get a call back (one assistant told us that her boss comes in at 11, leaves at 2 and wouldn’t be able to return our call, period). I guess business is so good that an order for 60K+ isn’t noteworthy.
- Last resort—contact the issuing studios themselves. Most were non-responsive. Because of financial constraints and the poor retail DVD market, they were either unable or unwilling to supply what was needed.
- Eureka! What they say is true, “it’s all about relationships.” We took a deep dive into our data base and found a resource that might be help. Turns out they were. Within 24 hours we were connected to the head of Warner Home Video. Not only did his office respond, they couldn’t have been nicer (thanks Izela and Ron). Warner Bros. had the inventory– Turner Classic Movies- GREATEST CLASSICS: Best Picture Winners , and we were off and running.
- Next step:We sent them a check
They sent us the DVD’s
The rest is history!
Challenge II:
We needed more “stuff.” We already provided home entertainment and thought at first that “more would be more.” Netflix came to mind. But it turns out that a gift certificate from them requires an up-front credit card number. We couldn’t recommend a premium that made the receiver feel like they had to pay for their own gift—so nix on Netflix.
We needed a Plan “B” and thought, “How about a night out at the movies?” We checked around and FANDANGO (recently acquired by Comcast) seemed to offer the biggest bang for the buck—they even had a plan for places off the beaten track and without theater chains. We ordered 6000 movie tickets (2 per custom certificate, threw in branded replicas of old-time movie reels filled with favorite movie snacks: Twizzlers, Swedish Fish, Raisinets and flavored popcorn.
Result: 3000 well-satisfied attendees and one very happy client.
We also worked with FANDANGO (Recently acquired by Comcast), to supply 3,000 movie tickets-for-two placed with a customized and branded tin. We had the tin shaped like an old-fashioned movie reel and filled it to the brim with standard movie favorites: Twizzlers, Swedish Fish, Raisinets and the obvious classic… POPCORN.
We wanted to guarantee that all of the event attendees would be left with a memorable performance and a fun “movie-moment-o” so that our clients wouldn’t be forgotten!
* Please feel free to email us should you want to learn more about our relationship with Fandango and the details of this specialized project.
