Mack's video attack

By Ray Allegrezza -- Furniture Today, January 26, 2009

HOUSTON — With a picture being worth a thousand words, Jim McIngvale, owner of Gallery Furniture, has made an art out of creating memorable impressions with consumers through a steady stream of TV commercials.

Soon after launching his business in 1981, McIngvale earned a reputation for the unconventional. His zany TV spots in the persona of frenetic pitchman “Mattress Mack” quickly established him as one of the best-recognized faces in Houston while putting Top 100 Gallery Furniture indelibly on the map.

So when he decided recently that he'd like to reach out to younger consumers and also create buzz for his store, he developed an innovative event that would enable him to obtain both objectives — Mattress Mack's Video Contest.

The ground rules were simple: Create your own TV commercial promoting Gallery Furniture, make it between 30 to 60 seconds long and don't be afraid to get crazy. The contest also stipulated that entries had to come from within the Gallery Furniture delivery area, which opened the contest to consumers living within a 300-mile radius of the store.

Gallery announced the contest with a commercial that featured Mattress Mack inviting customers to take their best shot at making the spot.

Gallery Furniture made the store available on certain days and times to any contestant who wanted to film in the facility.

McIngvale also made it clear that he would generously reward the best work. The producer of the wining video would not only have his or her commercial aired on TV but also would win a $25,000 shopping spree at the store.

The creator of the second-place video would receive a $10,000 shopping spree, and the third-place winner a $5,000 shopping spree.

Consumers had a 90-day time frame to produce and submit their videos, which would be posted on Gallery's Web site. The winners would be determined by votes cast by visitors to the site.

McIngvale recruited his manager of e-commerce and Internet marketing, Hamilton Masters, to oversee the event.

“The idea of a video contest was perfect for us,” Masters said. “Jim had become an icon as a result of his commercials, and the audience we were interested in reaching had grown up watching his spots on TV.”

Masters, who prior to joining Gallery had spent 20 years in television as an executive producer with a local CBS affiliate, knew that certain portions of the contest such as posting the videos and monitoring the voting would best be handled by a third party.

Memelabs, a Canadian company that designs and manages Web-based, viral marketing campaigns, was called in to help.

Nadia Nascimento, the Memelabs strategist who worked with Gallery, helped screen and post the video submissions, kept metrics on how many people visited the site during the contest and also monitored contestants' Web addresses, “to make sure nobody was trying to stack the deck by voting multiple times.”

Having previously worked on similar contests conducted on a national scale, Nascimento was stunned by the response to Gallery's contest.

“This was a runaway success that generated participation and traffic on the Web site more in keeping with national contests,” she said.

At the end of the 90-day contest, Gallery had received thousands of hits on its Web site and scores of entries, of which 61 were posted online for consumers to view and vote on.

“We were floored by the number of submissions,” agreed Masters. “We had specific criteria that had to be met and, even so, we ended up with more than 60 commercials.”

He was also impressed with the quality and creativity of the commercials.

“They ranged from an Elvis-impersonating puppet singing about being 'all shook up' at Gallery Furniture to a frustrated couple throwing their old furniture off a balcony,” Masters said. “We even received a minimalist commercial featuring a woman sitting on a sofa with her feet up on an imaginary ottoman as a not-so-subtle sign to her husband that they need furniture.”

When all the votes were tallied, voters decided that “Mattress Man,” which got 7,559 votes, was the No. 1 commercial. The spot features a mild-mannered Gallery Furniture stockperson who, after getting knocked on the head, wakes up with in a superman-like costume and “a strange furniture force that gave him the might of a mattress, the tenacity of a table, the strength of a love seat and the mouth of Mattress Mack.”

The second-place commercial, The Wise Lawn Man, netted 7,463 votes. It features a man who, while trimming bushes, sees a woman attempting to relax on flimsy old furniture, then struggling to get a clear picture on her dilapidated TV set.

As he prepares to drive off, he shakes his head, turns to the camera and notes that if the woman had just gone to Gallery Furniture, she could have gotten her furniture the same day and saved lots of money.

The third-place video, which received 3,863 votes, depicts two musicians singing the virtues of Gallery Furniture. One of them is a Ray Charles lookalike decked out in the singer's signature attire — a tuxedo and Ray Ban sunglasses. His partner, a rapper, extols the syncopated praises of Mattress Mack.

These and other contest videos can be viewed at http://memelabs.com/galleryfurniture/

What made the Gallery contest such a hit?

“There were a lot of reasons, Nascimento said. “For openers, Jim McIngvale came into the contest with an incredibly strong persona. And because of that, he is easy to mimic. Jim also encouraged the contestants to have fun and be as creative as possible. And the chance to win a $25,000 shopping spree simply put it over the top.”

While one of the initial objectives was to attract younger consumers, the contest not only ended up engaging consumers of all types and ages, it also spread across the country as a result of peer-to-peer viral marketing.

“One person would submit a video, then e-mail his or her friends to watch it and vote for it. Those friends, in turn, sent e-mails to their friends and we ended up drawing traffic from all over the country,” Masters said.

All told, the contest micro- site attracted 42,774 unique visitors and 139,619 unique page views. Most visitors spent between 5 and 10 minutes on the site, “with many others spending lots more time than that,” Masters confirmed.

While unable to share specific costs, Masters said the event, which,”probably came close to six figures,” was worth it. “We wanted buzz; we wanted them talking about us to each other online; we wanted the Gallery consumer, in particular the younger consumer, to see us as the store that's not simply aware of the new media, but as the store that embraces it. Based on what happened, we more than met all of those objectives,” Masters said.

In addition to boosting awareness, traffic, sales and goodwill, Gallery benefited from the attention the local media gave the contest.

“Since I was one of the contact people during the contest, I know how much free press Mattress Mack got,” Nascimento said. “He was interviewed on local television and radio stations and was also interviewed by the local papers.”

Nascimento also recalls being “bombarded by e-mails from consumers who just wanted to share personal stories about shopping at Gallery or to thank Gallery for sponsoring such a cool event.”

“To be successful, a store not only has to have buzz, it also has to connect with the younger shoppers who are congregating on YouTube and Facebook,” McIngvale said. “And since the objective was to connect with them and in doing so, we also connected with their parents, I'd say this was an overwhelming success.”

The ground rules were simple: Create your own TV commercial promoting Gallery Furniture, make it between 30 to 60 seconds long and don't be afraid to get crazy. The contest also stipulated that entries had to come from within the Gallery Furniture delivery area, which opened the contest to consumers living within a 300-mile radius of the store.

Gallery announced the contest with a commercial that featured Mattress Mack inviting customers to take their best shot at making the spot.

Gallery Furniture made the store available on certain days and times to any contestant who wanted to film in the facility.

McIngvale also made it clear that he would generously reward the best work. The producer of the wining video would not only have his or her commercial aired on TV but also would win a $25,000 shopping spree at the store.

The creator of the second-place video would receive a $10,000 shopping spree, and the third-place winner a $5,000 shopping spree.

Consumers had a 90-day time frame to produce and submit their videos, which would be posted on Gallery's Web site. The winners would be determined by votes cast by visitors to the site.

McIngvale recruited his manager of e-commerce and Internet marketing, Hamilton Masters, to oversee the event.

“The idea of a video contest was perfect for us,” Masters said. “Jim had become an icon as a result of his commercials, and the audience we were interested in reaching had grown up watching his spots on TV.”

Masters, who prior to joining Gallery had spent 20 years in television as an executive producer with a local CBS affiliate, knew that certain portions of the contest such as posting the videos and monitoring the voting would best be handled by a third party.

Memelabs, a Canadian company that designs and manages Web-based, viral marketing campaigns, was called in to help.

Nadia Nascimento, the Memelabs strategist who worked with Gallery, helped screen and post the video submissions, kept metrics on how many people visited the site during the contest and also monitored contestants' Web addresses, “to make sure nobody was trying to stack the deck by voting multiple times.”

Having previously worked on similar contests conducted on a national scale, Nascimento was stunned by the response to Gallery's contest.

“This was a runaway success that generated participation and traffic on the Web site more in keeping with national contests,” she said.

At the end of the 90-day contest, Gallery had received thousands of hits on its Web site and scores of entries, of which 61 were posted online for consumers to view and vote on.

“We were floored by the number of submissions,” agreed Masters. “We had specific criteria that had to be met and, even so, we ended up with more than 60 commercials.”

He was also impressed with the quality and creativity of the commercials.

“They ranged from an Elvis-impersonating puppet singing about being 'all shook up' at Gallery Furniture to a frustrated couple throwing their old furniture off a balcony,” Masters said. “We even received a minimalist commercial featuring a woman sitting on a sofa with her feet up on an imaginary ottoman as a not-so-subtle sign to her husband that they need furniture.”

When all the votes were tallied, voters decided that “Mattress Man,” which got 7,559 votes, was the No. 1 commercial. The spot features a mild-mannered Gallery Furniture stockperson who, after getting knocked on the head, wakes up with in a superman-like costume and “a strange furniture force that gave him the might of a mattress, the tenacity of a table, the strength of a love seat and the mouth of Mattress Mack.”

The second-place commercial, The Wise Lawn Man, netted 7,463 votes. It features a man who, while trimming bushes, sees a woman attempting to relax on flimsy old furniture, then struggling to get a clear picture on her dilapidated TV set.

As he prepares to drive off, he shakes his head, turns to the camera and notes that if the woman had just gone to Gallery Furniture, she could have gotten her furniture the same day and saved lots of money.

The third-place video, which received 3,863 votes, depicts two musicians singing the virtues of Gallery Furniture. One of them is a Ray Charles lookalike decked out in the singer's signature attire — a tuxedo and Ray Ban sunglasses. His partner, a rapper, extols the syncopated praises of Mattress Mack.

These and other contest videos can be viewed at http://memelabs.com/galleryfurniture/

What made the Gallery contest such a hit?

“There were a lot of reasons, Nascimento said. “For openers, Jim McIngvale came into the contest with an incredibly strong persona. And because of that, he is easy to mimic. Jim also encouraged the contestants to have fun and be as creative as possible. And the chance to win a $25,000 shopping spree simply put it over the top.”

While one of the initial objectives was to attract younger consumers, the contest not only ended up engaging consumers of all types and ages, it also spread across the country as a result of peer-to-peer viral marketing.

“One person would submit a video, then e-mail his or her friends to watch it and vote for it. Those friends, in turn, sent e-mails to their friends and we ended up drawing traffic from all over the country,” Masters said.

All told, the contest micro- site attracted 42,774 unique visitors and 139,619 unique page views. Most visitors spent between 5 and 10 minutes on the site, “with many others spending lots more time than that,” Masters confirmed.

While unable to share specific costs, Masters said the event, which,”probably came close to six figures,” was worth it. “We wanted buzz; we wanted them talking about us to each other online; we wanted the Gallery consumer, in particular the younger consumer, to see us as the store that's not simply aware of the new media, but as the store that embraces it. Based on what happened, we more than met all of those objectives,” Masters said.

In addition to boosting awareness, traffic, sales and goodwill, Gallery benefited from the attention the local media gave the contest.

“Since I was one of the contact people during the contest, I know how much free press Mattress Mack got,” Nascimento said. “He was interviewed on local television and radio stations and was also interviewed by the local papers.”

Nascimento also recalls being “bombarded by e-mails from consumers who just wanted to share personal stories about shopping at Gallery or to thank Gallery for sponsoring such a cool event.”

“To be successful, a store not only has to have buzz, it also has to connect with the younger shoppers who are congregating on YouTube and Facebook,” McIngvale said. “And since the objective was to connect with them and in doing so, we also connected with their parents, I'd say this was an overwhelming success.”

The objective

Generate additional buzz for Gallery Furniture, engage younger consumers via electronic media and send a strong message that Gallery Furniture is not only aware of the Internet, it embraces it.

The methodology

Engage the local community by holding a contest that challenges consumers living within a 300-mile radius to produce a new Gallery commercial. To help manage the project, Gallery brought in Memelabs, a specialist in viral marketing campaigns. Memelabs created a microsite where contestants could post submissions and established protocols to make sure voting was legitimate.

The payoff

The contest resulted in 61 qualified videos. During the contest, traffic — both in-store and online — spiked, as did sales. Other key numbers:

• Unique visitors: 42,774

• Unique page views: 139,619

• Average time spent on the site: Between 5 and 10 minutes, with many visiting for longer periods.

The sponsor

Gallery Furniture in Houston. Ranked No. 62 on Furniture/Today's Top 100 ranking, Gallery had 2007 furniture and bedding sales of $115.8 million.