Teleflora to Advertise During Super Bowl
Hoping to remind male viewers that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, Teleflora will run its first ever Super Bowl ad during the 2009 game. Florists, in general, have shied away from the championship game for the past two decades. FTD, was the last floral company to buy into the big game with spots featuring NFL Hall of Famer Merlin Olsen.
Teleflora is taking a decidedly different tack. Its spot, which is reminiscent of office sitcoms, shows a man giving a box of flowers to a mousy female coworker. Soon, the flowers start insulting her. In the unfinalized commercial the flowers said: “Have you ever considered rhinoplasty?”
“Don’t send flowers in a box,” the ad warns. “You don’t know what they’ll say.” The commercial, which will run in the game’s second quarter, is tagged with “The Teleflora Difference.” It directs viewers to Teleflora.com.
Lynda Resnick, owner of Teleflora parent company Roll International, said, “Sixty percent of the flowers today are delivered in a box. Our flowers are hand-designed and hand-delivered right to your doorstep. That’s the difference.”
Resnick likened the indignity of a woman having to arrange her own Valentine’s Day bouquet to having to cook her own romantic dinner. The spot will tout its Rubies & Roses Bouquet in a keepsake vase.
Florists have taken a hit because so many wire services sell impersonal boxed flowers direct to the consumer, according to Resnick, who also runs Pom Wonderful and Fiji Water. “It’s taken about half a billion out of the floral industry, and that’s a lot in a $6 billion or $7 billion industry. Our motto is to support the local florist.”
Teleflora’s in-house unit Fire Station Agency handles.
Roll International spent $10 million on U.S. media for the brand for the first 10 months of 2008, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus (which does not include online spending). The year prior it spent $11 million.