Preserving the preservationists

In many ways, it’s a common marketing situation: a manufacturer faces dwindling sales of a venerable product due to a shrinking core market; an ancillary market holds some promise but its growth potential is hindered by pricing issues.

In other ways, it’s almost unique: most of the people who buy the product do so because they have to, not because they want to; and most of them have no idea what the product is used for.

Then there’s the product itself: duck stamps.

Duck stamps? Well-known to duck hunters and stamp collectors, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Federal Duck Stamp Program has, since 1934, helped fund the preservation of over five million acres of wetlands in the U.S. Unlike many government programs, this one is a model of efficiency: well over 90 percent of its revenues go directly to the purchase and preservation of wetlands. The rest is used for production and distribution of the stamps.

Known in official parlance as Migratory Bird Hunting and Conservation Stamps, duck stamps are a required annual purchase for duck hunters. (Most hunters say they have little idea of what duck stamp fees are used for. They just know that you have to buy a stamp if you want to hunt ducks.) But the number of hunters is decreasing, and though the stamps are sought after by collectors, their hefty price (last year’s stamp was $15) makes accumulating them an expensive proposition for the garden-variety philatelist.

“We needed to find a way to reach a new audience, to broaden our market, as with any product,” says Margaret Wendy, manager of sales and marketing, Federal Duck Stamp Office, Department of the Interior, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington, D.C.

So the government has embarked on a test print and TV ad campaign appealing to conservation-minded individuals by offering them a chance to preserve wetlands simply by purchasing a duck stamp. For $30, they receive a certificate (bearing a duck stamp) which proclaims that their money has gone to preserve 1/10 of an acre of wetlands. “We’re hoping to attract bird watchers, hikers, and others who understand what is happening to wetlands but don’t know that there is a way that they can easily and cheaply do something to help,” Wendy says.

Focus on the stamp

Initially, the idea was to focus the marketing campaign on the stamps themselves, their beauty and the value of collecting them. But in focus groups conducted during the development of the campaign by The Ball Group, a Lancaster, Pa.-based research and advertising firm, the stamps themselves weren’t enough to make the sale. “The collecting aspect was of minimal interest,” says Wes Ball, the firm’s president. “People are more interested in saving Beanie Babies.”

Hence the certificate idea, which came directly from research. More on that later.

Certificate

Focus groups were held in cities around the country, two groups per city, one with environmentally active people and the other with people who were not environmentally active but who were not predisposed against environmental issues. (In addition, a telephone survey with a random national sample was conducted to determine awareness of the Duck Stamp Program and to gauge interest and participation in environmental issues.)

As part of a process The Ball Group calls Creative Regression Analysis - which is designed to identify the creative appeals and support factors that create a sale - a range of creative appeals was tested in the focus groups, including: buying the stamps as a way to save the environment; buying and collecting them as a form of investment; and giving stamps as gifts to friends or relatives interested in stamp collecting or in preserving the environment.

Each appeal had its own set of possible approaches. For example, in testing the environmental appeal, tacks included playing off respondents’ fear of unchecked development, extinction of animals that live in the wetlands, and contaminated water.

“After the initial discussion about environmental causes - what was important to them, why they were or were not involved - we jumped into different appeals,” Ball says. “We had two sets of three so we split the room in half and had each person look at all of them. We wanted them to judge which ads made them want to act, which turned them off, and what the elements were that made them want to act or not act.”

Once a range of appeals was identified, the focus group questioning centered on isolating the elements that made people change their minds. “We take them from being dead set against the program and we watch to see what the key elements are that make them change their mind and what they repeat back to you about that. And then you see where it is that they are absolutely sold – that’s where the certificate came from,” Ball says.

Respondents were very clear that the ads shouldn’t feature people enjoying the wetlands. “We had some ads that showed people in the wetlands - for example, a family riding bicycles through them - and they were very negatively received. People didn’t want to see people in the wetlands. They were seen as a sacred thing, which surprised us. Most of the wetlands out there have people around them because they are often in parks but the respondents saw it differently: let’s save this pristine resource.”

The focus on wetlands as a water filtration system also emerged from the research. Respondent interest faded if the ads focused on preserving habitat for ducks and other migratory waterfowl.

Credibility was also key. “Respondents wanted to know who was behind the program and why, and where does the money go. So we knew from that discussion that we had to build that information into the ads,” Ball says. However, the government involvement couldn’t be overplayed. The research uncovered a 50/50 split between respondents who thought government involvement in the program was a good thing and those who thought it was a problem.

The print ads focus on wetlands’ ability to filter water (one acre can purify 7.3 million gallons of water per year) and then segue into the Duck Stamp Program’s long history of preserving wetlands and its efficient use of funding. At the close, readers are invited to participate by calling the toll-free number to purchase a certificate.

Unmet needs

Ball says his firm’s approach centers on identifying respondents’ unmet needs, finding the elements in the product and its advertising that can meet those needs and spur a purchase. In the research on the Duck Stamp Program, one unmet need was uncovered among respondents with a concern for water quality. They wanted to help but didn’t want to spend a lot of money and didn’t want to be seen as supporting environmental organizations they viewed as politically extreme.

As it turned out, while almost everyone expressed concern about the environment, few were willing to help protect it without receiving some direct benefit (other than clean water). In this case that benefit took the form of a frameable certificate.

Previous work on philanthropic issues has shown Ball that people aren’t as selfless as they would like to think they are. In the end, they want something from their act of kindness, whether it’s a good feeling inside, or in this case, a certificate they can parade before friends as proof of their environmental awareness. “We had people describing how they would take friends over and show the certificate to them, almost as if they had bragging rights. That was one of the critical elements that came out of the research.”

Early stages

The advertising is still in the early stages. The print ads have appeared in Reader’s Digest (to capture a broad readership), and National Geographic and Audubon (to reach a well-educated, environmentally concerned audience). TV spots have been run in San Diego and Baltimore.

The ads are also designed to drive traffic to www.savewetlands.org, a Web site that provides information on the program and also serves as another vehicle for purchasing the stamps.

“In the markets that we have the test going we’ll be doing telephone surveys to measure awareness and perceptions of the program,” Ball says. “Reader’s Digest is doing a study for us on that ad right now to see how people reacted to it. And we are of course tracking the sales process. It’s all direct response so we can tell when an ad ran and how the response mechanism is working.”

“When [The Ball Group] came back to us with test ads,” Wendy says, “the feeling among some of the people was that they had concentrated too much on the environment and not explaining the link to the Duck Stamp Program. This is an old program and the people who are connected with it are very proud of it. But we’re pleased with the campaign.”

Contribute every year

If everything goes as planned, hunters and stamp collectors won’t be the only ones making an annual duck stamp purchases. “We discovered a huge contingent who are concerned about the environment, especially air and water quality, and they believed that wetlands are a primary water filter for us, and felt that a $30 contribution was not only attractive but one that they would actively support again and again. We had people say, ‘Now that I know about this I’ll contribute money every year,’” Ball says.