Pesticide Manufacturer Offers Dead Bugs for Money
Johnson hopes its bug
hunt -- conducted nationwide -- will link its brands to good health and hygiene
and build market share for its pesticide products, including Raid, a household
bug spray.
Subject: Pesticide Manufacturer Offers Dead Bugs for Money
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 07:46:51 -0500
From: Stephen Tvedten <steve@getipm.com>
Organization: Get Set Inc. (www.getipm.com)
To: Paul Helliker <phelliker@cdpr.ca.gov>
Director, State of
California, Department of Pesticide Regulation
Dear Mr. Helliker,
I thought you might like to read an article entitled: Pesticide Manufacturer S. C. Johnson & Son Offers Dead
Bugs for Money - Attraction of Cash Unleashes Frenzy Of Stomping, Slapping and
Spraying - WANLAPA RERKKRIANGKRAI / WALL STREET JOURNAL 1nov00.
BANGKOK, Thailand -- Three young Thais, wearing surgical
gloves and face masks, hunch over mounds of dead mosquitoes piled high on a
table in a Bangkok shopping mall. With tiny tweezers, they painstakingly
separate and tally the crumpled bug bodies.
Smiling confidently amid a throng of onlookers is rice
farmer Manit Kodtongkum, who has just deposited an enormous mosquito mountain --
about 40,000 of them, according to the insect counters. Mr. Manit aims to parlay
the critters' corpses into a new television set by winning a dead-bugs-for-money
contest sponsored by the Thai subsidiary of U.S. pesticide manufacturer S. C.
Johnson & Son.
For months, Mr. Manit has waged a campaign to win the bug
bounty. Coming home from work each day, he sprayed his house with pesticide and
carefully plucked dead mosquitoes from sheets laid on the floor. Some of Manit's
competitors were less methodical. Supaporn Linnon, an unemployed 23-year old,
simply filled a glass jar with the squashed remains of mosquitoes she swatted by
hand.
Johnson hopes its bug hunt -- conducted nationwide -- will
link its brands to good health and hygiene and build market share for its
pesticide products, including Raid, a household bug spray. "We haven't done
this to double the size of the market tomorrow," says Johnson Managing
Director Maurizio Stampinato. "It's something we've done to increase our
market in the long term and link our brand to something that is good for
people."
Johnson kicked off its campaign in July. Teaming up with
local advertising company Direct Response (Thailand), a subsidiary of U.S.
advertising firm FCB Worldwide, Johnson ran advertisements in the form of mock
police "Wanted" notices, complete with cartoon criminal bugs.
Particularly eye-catching for recession-weary Thais, the ads promised:
"Raid takes dead bugs and pays one baht (2.3 U.S. cents) for each."
Working on the assumption that children influence their
parents, Johnson and Direct Response went further. With the blessing of
Thailand's health ministry, they sent performers dressed up as mosquitoes and
roaches into 70 schools in 30 provinces to promote awareness of inspect-spread
diseases such as malaria and dengue fever.
The cash-for-bugs claim was a tad exaggerated: Johnson
didn't actually pay a bounty of one baht per insect. Instead, the company staged
a series of auctions in which contenders could use their dead-bug horde --
nominally valued at one baht a corpse -- to bid for consumer goods ranging from
gold necklaces and toasters to radios and TVs.
Even so, nobody at Johnson or Direct Response expected the
buzz the campaign set off among Thais struggling with the aftermath of a 1997-98
recession that wiped out hundreds of thousands of jobs. Johnson executives say
they initially expected people might show up with bags of bugs roughly
equivalent to the price of a TV. But at one auction in the northern city of
Chiang Mai, one amateur exterminator won a competition for a 14-inch TV valued
at about 5,000 baht with a stunning bid of 1.6 million mosquitoes.
To cope, the Johnson's tally takers had to develop a short
cut: They counted each contestant's first 50,000 bug bodies, weighed that sample
and then weighed the contestant's remaining pile and multiplied.
"I thought people would turn up with a few hundred
corpses each," says one Direct Response employee monitoring the counting
ahead of the Bangkok auction. "I was very much surprised when one man
turned up with 20,000 dead bugs, I was even more surprised and shocked when
someone arrived with 1.6 million."
Direct Response's general manager, Tipapan Viriyawatana,
calls the campaign "a huge success." Competitors stomped, slapped and
sprayed a total of 5,504,224 mosquitoes, she says. In the process, Johnson --
thanks to local media interest -- wound up with about eight times as much
publicity as it paid for, Ms. Tipapan estimates.
So is Johnson selling more Raid? It is too soon to tell,
but feedback from the health ministry and consumers has been "very
positive," Mr. Stampinato says. Johnson executives are already planning
another campaign for next year.
That's just as well for Mr. Manit, the farmer who was
hoping to bag a TV. His impressive haul of 40,000 mosquitoes was trumped by
another bidder with a bucketful of 600,000 insects. --Nick Cumming-Bruce
contributed to this article.
Well Mr. Helliker,
what do you think of the campaign to sell more "registered"
POISONS?
Respectfully, Stephen
L. Tvedten
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