Toys for guns. Sneakers for guns. Mattresses for guns. Gasoline for guns. Groceries for guns. Such unusual exchanges of firepower for familiar consumer products have captured the nation's attention since last month, when Fernando Mateo, a carpet store owner, revitalized an almost moribund program sponsored by New York City that traded cash for guns.
Mr. Mateo's innovative twist, inspired by his 14-year-old son, Fernando Jr., was to sweeten the offer by adding certificates worth $100 in merchandise from marketers like Toys "R" Us, Foot Locker, Dial-A-Mattress and Gaseteria. The results so far: more than 1,100 weapons being swapped at the 34th Precinct station house in Washington Heights in upper Manhattan. Similar programs, carrying catchy, slogan-like names -- " Guns for Butter," "Goods for Guns" -- are being introduced in Paterson and Hudson County, N.J., and in Los Angeles.
The startling success of the program has been analyzed by everyone from criminologists to David Letterman, who proposed that "for every nuclear device North Korea turns in, they'll receive a $100 gift certificate from Toys "R" Us." But Mr. Mateo's effort has yet to be considered for what it also is: a promotional program.
Several marketing experts interviewed yesterday paid the program the ultimate compliment: They said they wished they had thought of it.
"It's a phenomenon," said Chris Sutherland, executive director of the Promotion Marketing Association of America, a trade organization in New York.
"And best of all," he added, "it's a real-life situation that did not occur as a result of a marketing plan."
Praising the program as "a wonderful example of how noncash incentives like merchandise work, and how well they work," Mr. Sutherland said, "It's a well-known axiom in promotion marketing, learned over the years by companies that run incentive programs, that noncash incentives are a better motivator than cash incentives."
"People relate to merchandise emotionally and don't relate to cash emotionally," he said. "It sounds weird, but it's true: You like money, but you also like what money will buy. And you'll respond to that quicker."
John H. Bissell, managing partner in the consulting division of Gundersen Brenner Inc., a marketing consulting and executive search firm in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., compared the program to a popular strategy called point-of-purchase politics or cause-related marketing, by which advertisers seek to build consumer loyalty by taking sides on important social issues.
"There's an immediacy here that is not true of many other cause-related marketing campaigns," he said, "so the timing is good."
"A marketer can say, 'As a result of our efforts, there are X-thousand fewer guns on the streets,' " he added. "That's a very concrete and powerful statement."
William M. Weilbacher, president of the Bismark Corporation, an advertising and marketing consulting company in Dennis, Mass., addressed a potential drawback of the program.
"Cynics might say the gun problem is so pervasive that whatever is being done is cosmetic and barely scratches the surface," he said. "It could be called the exploitation of a situation without any hope it'll alleviate the problem.
"But my inclination is to say their hearts are in the right place," he added. "This is not a smarmy scheme to sell more stuff in stores, but an effort on behalf of a good cause. To the extent that creates a 'halo effect' over the advertiser, it's all well and good."
Another possible difficulty for participants in the program is one shared by almost all point-of-purchase politics promotions: a backlash generated by consumer distaste for the cause being proselytized.
"My experience with cause-related marketing is that the more you stick with causes I'd call universally accepted, like children's diseases, the better off you are," said Robert S. Shulman, chief executive of Copernicus, a marketing consulting company in Westport, Conn. "After all, who would argue against giving a child a richer, fuller life?"
"So this is a very risky move," he added, "yet it's worth it. The rewards outweigh the risks because of the public relations value of participating, particularly to reach a target market of kids and parents."
"The program isn't trying to get 62-year-old guys in Texas who shoot deer to turn in their guns, " he continued. "It's well targeted, if you will, to people in urban markets."
James R. Gregory, chairman of Gregory & Clyburne, an advertising, marketing and public relations agency in Stamford, Conn., agreed that "there's a possibility of a backlash," but added: "There's such a ground swell of support for getting guns off the street, I don't see that happening, at least in the short term."
"I'm a hunter," he added. "I own guns. Yet there's really a craziness out there. Anyone who has any sense at all knows there are too many guns. "
