Flower Vendor Fields Don Rickles in Super Bowl Ad

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Animated flowers that talk trash? There’s only one voice that could pull that off: insult comedian Don Rickles.

At least that’s how L.A. billionaires Lynda and Stewart Resnick see it. The couple enlisted Rickles to lend his voice – and slander – to a Super Bowl ad for their online flower delivery service Teleflora.

The Valentine’s Day-targeted ad will air during the second quarter of the Super Bowl game Feb. 7. The narrative is simple: A young woman working in an office gets a bouquet in a box. The flowers then spring out and issue some trademark Rickles jibes.

Lynda Resnick, who oversees marketing for Teleflora, said the idea of ad is to show that bouquets in a box are cheap and cheesy, while Teleflora’s bouquets in a vase are beautiful and classy.

It’s not an easy time for the flower retail business.

“It used to be a lot easier to be in business than it is today,” Resnick said. “Today, it is really about slogging it out in the trenches. Your field forces have to be on top of their game – your public relations, advertising and online presence. You read results and turn on a dime if you are going south.”

The Rickles ad will be Teleflora’s second appearance in the Super Bowl, which draws the single biggest TV audience of the year. Last year’s ad didn’t get rave reviews: Consumers surveyed called it mean-spirited. (What will they say about Don Rickles?) But Resnick said the exposure resulted in a 5 percent increase in sales for Valentine’s Day 2009 compared with 2008. By comparison, Resnick said Teleflora’s competitors were down 15 percent for the 2009 holiday compared with the previous year.

Industry analysts said running a commercial during the game may not generate spectacular sales because Valentine’s Day falls on a Sunday – and that means people might be more likely to shop at a store rather than online.

While the short lead time between the Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day is a good thing for the ad, the Sunday shopping day might be a disadvantage, said George Sutton, a senior research analyst at Minneapolis-based market research firm Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC.

“It helps,” Sutton said. “But it may be a problem when people realize that Valentines’ Day is on a Sunday, and then they may look at options.”

The Teleflora ad for the Super Bowl – where a 30-second spot cost an estimated $2.5 million to $2.8 million, down from more than $3 million in 2009, according to TNS Media Intelligence – will get more use in the days running up to Valentine’s.

After the commercial airs during the Super Bowl game, the ad will continue to air through Feb. 12 on sports channels such as ESPN. It will be featured on the home pages of Web sites such as FoxSports.com and Yahoo.com, and the ad will be part of a mobile phone campaign in which consumers can order flowers through their cell phone.

Discretionary spending

Teleflora is part of the Resnick’s West L.A. private holding company Roll International Corp., which also owns pomegranate juice manufacturer Pom Wonderful, high-end bottled water purveyor Fiji Water, and fruit and nut grower Paramount Farms.

Teleflora sells flowers and food baskets through its Web site, and provides Web site hosting, e-mail and order processing for about 12,000 member florists. The company’s selling point is that its online orders of flowers are arranged by a professional florist and then hand-delivered in a vase from a local shop.

Resnick told the Business Journal that Teleflora had a 9 percent increase in revenue from 2008 to 2009. By comparison, Teleflora competitor 1-800-Flowers posted a 3.4 percent decline for the same period, and FTD saw about a 14 percent drop.

In the face of the downturn at the beginning of 2009, Teleflora began offering a wider range of prices for its products, selling its holiday bouquets for $29.99 – a small cut from $33.

Sutton of Craig-Hallum said online flower companies were forced to lower prices and reduce shipping costs in order to keep their orders coming amid consumer resistance to discretionary spending.

“We have been seeing declining price points because people aren’t willing to spend as much,” Sutton said. “The floral industry in 2009 was obviously challenged because it’s a pure discretionary expense. I anticipate that 2010 will be moderately better, but the industry is still subject to the reality of discretionary spending.”

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