Office Depot’s Dog Of A Promotion

This Dog Is Smart
This promotion is not.

Small businesses are like stray dogs. That’s what Office Depot seems to be saying with the theme of their current promotion: “Adopt A Small Business Contest.” And that’s just the most noticeable of all the marketing mistakes in this dog of a promotion.

Today, many large businesses are targeting small business customers. Some of them make mistakes; it may be because they’re just learning how to approach this market. But as a retailer with a long record of service and a physical presence in local small business communities, you’d think that Office Depot would know better.

Why do we hate this promotion? Let us count the ways:

1. The main theme is insulting, and irrelevant too
Start with the “Adopt A Small Business” theme. Not only is it potentially insulting, it’s irrelevant. Nowhere in the promotion is anyone invited to do anything vaguely like adopting a homeless dog, or a stretch of littered highway, or a small business in need of help.

2. Theme overload is confusing
In addition to “Adopt A Small Business,” the promotion website shouts out “Survival Of The Smartest” and “Small Business Self-Bailout.” Was someone trying to satisfy all the creative factions at Office Depot? Which idea are we supposed to pay attention to? Are these themes supposed to make small businesses feel good, let alone participate in this promotion?

3. The prizes are boring
The contest prizes have powerful appeal for small business people…the ones with insomnia. Each prize is all Office Depot: A $1300 gift card, a year of technical support, and another $110 gift card for copying/printing/shipping. We can hear the snoring starting now. Yes, we know that high value is important in prizes. But excitement is far more important, and these prizes are self-serving, and about as exciting as a ream of copy paper. We detect multiple business units at Office Depot, each trying to be sure they have some “presence” in the promotion.

4. Participation involves way too much work
The idea seems to be that small business people have to work hard. So let’s make them work even harder. To enter the contest, Office Depot tells customers to “upload a 2-minute video that explains the smart things your small business is doing to survive these challenging times, and how Office Depot is helping you get through them.” How much time and effort are small businesses willing to waste, for an off chance to win $2000 in office supplies? The one thing small businesses need most is more time to focus on their business.

5. Support communications are just plain dumb
There’s a long history of very funny comedy duos: Laurel and Hardy, Abbot and Costello, Cheech and Chong , Burns and Allen and more. But Office Depot’s Matt and Matt will never be among them. Imagine a couple of fresh-faced, entry level assistant brand manager types pretending to be small business owners, trying to do stand-up comedy. In the online video introducing the program, one Matt recites the contest rules while the other Matt makes dopey remarks. Nice try, but not funny. In another video, Matt and Matt narrate as a female small business owner beats up on a “Recession Aggression” beanbag chair. The point of this video is….who knows?

All this leads to the ultimate question – a modern day, marketing-oriented version of “Other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” To which we answer: “Well, the rotating panoramic in-store display graphics were kind of cool.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t make up for this dog of a promotion being all bark and no bite. Maybe it’s time Office Depot got a bit smarter.

Apologies, to Mick pictured above. He’s too good to be associated with this “promotion”, but he is darn good looking…and a smart dog.