Stephanie Fierman - Marketing Observations Grown Daily

Friday July 25th 2008, 1:32 pm
Filed under: stephanie fierman

USA Today printed a small item today describing a Houston Zoo program that offers free admittance to low-income families for 5 days each year. That is really great.

The problem is that fewer than 9% of the 80,000 people who take advantage of the offer each day come from low-income zip codes. The president and CEO of the zoo laments, “We’re not hitting our target market.”

Marketers to the rescue!

I don’t know how the Zoo promotes this program, but you’ve got to go to where the customers are. How about appointing an advisory board made up of representatives of low-income assistance organizations to help carry the message? How about mailing tickets to the 85+ low-income medical clinics in the Houston area? Don’t ask first - just mail. Build a list: the Houston Housing Authority, local libraries and HELP Houston Housing for the poor with HIV/AIDs are candidates. Ask the Houston Electric Company to include tickets in the bills sent to families that take advangate of the Lite Up Texas Electricity Program. Families must elect to participate, so we have their addresses…

And this might be too much work, but the Zoo could even mark the tickets sent out (or printed from a secure site) to individual organizations and give an annual grant to the one that has the highest number of tickets redeemed.

I got a million of ‘em.

P.S. Not all people feel the same – especially in Texas. Click here for just a few comments you can find on the web in response to the original article in The Houston Chronicle.