Little Giant Blueberries – A Marketing Review

Today I saw a TV commercial for Little Giant Blueberries, a blueberry plant that will supposedly give you pints and pints of the berries on a daily basis.

The very moment the commercial started, one word came screaming into my mind . . . SCAM!

Is it a scam?  I honestly don’t know as I have not and will not try the product, but there are many obvious warning signs that point to it being a less than ethical company.

Let’s take a look at the commercial first.  If you haven’t seen it on TV, the same commercial plays on the company’s sales page in the above link.

First of all, the announcer’s loud and excited voice is a scare.  This guy is very excited to give you obvious information so that you’ll be less likely to ask the real questions in the end.

One of my pet peeves is when salesmen treat you like a total idiot.  This ranks slightly above the salesmen themselves being complete idiots.

I know that there are a lot of idiots out there in the world, but when you have TV and radio commercials that act this way, and annoying sales reps in stores who also treat you that way, then that is a major problem.  Treat me like an average, semi-knowledgeable person, and I might give you a moment of my time.  If you cannot do that, see ya!

For example, a few weeks ago I was wearing my red and white Detroit Red Wings hat while walking through a store.  Anybody wearing NHL gear down here in Atlanta stands out, especially when wearing bright colors.  We have a pretty good hockey team this year, but the fans are few and far between.  (I do wear my Atlanta Thrashers hat and jersey during the regular season and mainly save my Red Wings hat and jersey for during the playoffs.)

Anyway, a DIRECTV sales rep saw my hat and called out, “Hey, Detroit!”

“Yeah?” I responded.

“Red Wings?” he said, half asking, half making a statement.

I rolled my eyes up at the hat, making it obvious that I couldn’t see the team’s logo while wearing the hat.  “Last time I checked.”

“Good,” he replied, visibly annoyed that I gave him a sarcastic answer.  He quickly changed subjects and went right for the kill.  “Do you folks have DIRECTV?”

“Yes,” I replied while continuing my walk past his little sales booth.  I was never walking to the booth at any time, but rather past it to get to a different part of the store.  This guy had a prime spot by the door with the power to harass every person who walked within twenty feet of him.  As I was already walking away he called out, “I believe I knew that,” in response to my sarcastic answer.  “Good,” I called back to him and continued walking away.

This was a case where a salesmen was trying to break the ice and start a conversation by making one of the most basic statements possible.  Anybody who has paid two minutes to professional hockey knows about the Detroit Red Wings.  They’re only one of the oldest professional ice hockey teams in the country, and they are the most successful of the American NHL teams by a long shot.  Their most recent NHL championship was just two years ago.  The flying tire logo is well known even to those non-NHL sports fans.

So for him to try to start a conversation by pointing out the obvious, he may as well have said something like, “Hey, I like red hats!” or “Hockey is awesome!”  This guy obviously had nothing good to say about one of my favorite sports teams or he would have made a relevant comment about a player or the team.  He could have also said something interesting about the city of Detroit.  But no, he just wanted to use an idiotic comment about the team to try to get a quick sale.

It doesn’t get much more insulting to a sports fan than that.

If you work in sales, you need to treat your customers with respect.  If you want to talk sports, assume that they are at least semi-knowledgeable until they prove otherwise.

This Little Giant Blueberry commercial starts out being incredibly annoying and stupid the way that the announcer tells us how everybody loves blueberries.  Oh, really?  How about those people with fresh fruit allergies such as myself?  How about those that just don’t like the fruit?  And really, how many people really love them versus those who think that they are just okay fruit?

Making overly simplified statements such as “everybody loves . . .” or for moms the popular, “kids love . . .” is just asking for trouble.  If you have to resort to statements like that instead of telling us the greatness of your product, then you’re probably trying to sell me something inferior.  If your product is so great, it will sell itself as long as it’s not overpriced.

After stating the obvious that “everybody loves blueberries,” the announcer then tells us about expensive it is to buy them in the store.  After all, they can cost up to (key words being “up to”) “$10 a pint or even more” we’re told.  Wow, that’s expensive!  I wonder if there’s a cheaper way to get the fruit?  Hmmm.

Woah, what’s this?  We can grow our own blueberries?  Holy crap, that’s awesome!  Why didn’t I think of doing that?  I’m an idiot!  It’s a “non-stop blueberry festival all season long[!]”  Amazing!

The commercial then goes on to tell us that there is a special TV price where I can get two of the plants for only $10 (plus postage and handling, of course).  Luckily, the same deal is also available on the company’s sale’s page.  Later in the commercial we’re told that if we act now, because this is such an incredible offer, we can get a third plant for free.  All we have to pay is a little extra in postage and handling.  Luckily, and believe me, this is a lucky find, the same buy-two-get-one-free offer is available on the company’s sales page!  Talk about a stroke of luck!  I’m sure some marketing idiot screwed up and accidentally put that offer on the website since the TV ad told us that we only had fifteen minutes to take advantage of the bonus offer.

Each of the miracle plants comes shipped ready-to-plant “and yields up to four pints everyday all season long!”  These special plants were “recently discovered and cultivated by U.S. plant expert,” complete with some stereotypical, dorky looking nerd impersonating a real scientist on the screen.  They “virtually grow themselves[!]”  This is just too good to be true!

The commercial and incredibly annoying announcer then goes on and on telling us about how easy it is to grow the plants and how they will produce thousands of blueberries per plant.  Large, colorful text on the screen drills this information into our minds in a desperate effort to make us order the plants and give them money.  The commercial doesn’t forget about showing us useful ways to enjoy the blueberries, complete with a happy family enjoying the tiny fruit.

<sniff><wipes away a tear from extreme joy>

That just seems too good to be true, right?

I mean, why spend the ten or so dollars per pint of the berries when I could just be growing them myself, saving probably hundreds of dollars from not having to buy them in the store?  This product is just incredible!  Don’t the blueberry farmers know about this yet?

Hold it!  Do you smell something?  Yeah, there’s definitely something foul smelling around here, and this time it’s not my socks.

This commercial reeks!

At no point during the endless, high energy rambling does the announcer make a good sales point on why we should buy that miracle plant.  He mentions that they can yield a high load of the berries, but how many berries does the average highbush blueberry plants produce during an average growing season?  What makes this plant different from blueberry plants commonly available in plant nurseries?

Why should I whip out my credit card and pay high shipping and handling fees when I can go to the local Home Depot or even Walmart (for those who shop there) and stock up on blueberry plants for almost the same price?  At the store I get to pick out my exact plants, and if there is an urgent problem I can get it solved immediately.  There is no shipping any products back or dealing with customer service reps on the phone.  There is also no waiting and I can plant them immediately.

You know that you’re in trouble when a product that seems miraculous and too good to be true has either been researched or created by a generic “U.S. plant expert” or scientist or engineer or technician.  This is common for drug companies trying to sell miracle weight loss pills.  This is a false flag designed to give you confidence about a crappy product.  I suppose telling us the species of plant or ideal growing conditions would scare away too many buyers.  (Maine and Michigan are the top blueberry producers in the nation, by the way.  Long periods of daylight, mild summer weather and fertile soil do wonders when growing certain fruit crops.)   After all, not everybody will be able to grow the plants like they advertise in the commercial.

A good rule of thumb is to avoid advertisers and companies that resort to using loud announcers, flashy graphics, make obvious statements to get you agree about something, or try to sell you something too good to be true.  They do this to reach out to suckers and gullible people, and they don’t deserve a penny from the average, hard working people trying to make ends meet during this economic recession.

Scams are everywhere, my friends.  Do your research and study the alternatives before committing to a purchase.

Is the Little Giant Blueberries product a scam?

I honestly don’t know since I’ll never try it, but based on the poor commercial and overly simplified and equally uninformative website, the answer heavily leans towards “yes.”

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For more information about the Little Giant Blueberries, please visit the company’s website.

RellimZone.com is not affiliated with Little Giant Blueberries.