Sweet Dream Blackberries – A Marketing Review
Just the other day a rather peculiar TV commercial caught my attention.
Sure enough, if I were to order some special blackberry plants from an unknown company, I could have a harvest of the fruit. It can yield up to four pints of blackberries every day, all season long! Ahhhhhh!
Oh wow! Just imagine the possibilities of having that many blackberries! I mean, I just wouldn’t know what to do! I could open my own roadside store and sell the extra blackberries by the pint, right? Who out there wouldn’t want so many blackberries?
Sweet Dream Blackberries — www.SweetDreamBlackberries.com
Wait, a second! Haven’t I heard all of this before? That commercial on the SweetDreamBlackberries.com website sounds awfully familiar.
Hmmm.
Perhaps the extreme similarity between the two commercials is just a coincidence. 😉 At least the blackberry commercial tries to sell the product more professionally.
Enough about the blueberries. This article is about blackberries. Maybe next year there will be a commercial for my favorite, the raspberry.
Yeah, I know. Big difference between the berries.
Let’s take a look at the commercial on the www.SweetDreamBlackberries.com website and see if it sounds like a scam or not.
The commercial starts by selling us the concept of eating blackberries.
— Begin transmission —
Attention Earthlings! There’s a semi-popular fruit known as a blackberry. Blackberries are nutritious and have antioxidants. Eat them, or else!
— End transmission —
So, yeah, a lot of people like blackberries. And as we can see in the example, they can be fairly expensive in the grocery store. Is there a way around this problem?
Woah, we can actually grow those precious little fruits? Awesome!
Black Butte blackberry
And it’s not talking about growing just any blackberry. No, the commercial claims that they’re the “. . . sweetest, most delicious blackberries.” Not only that, but the plants are “. . . fast growing, ready to plant, and yields up to four pints every day all season long!”
On a side notice, notice how they spell “every day” as one word without the space. Can I take out the space when talking about doing something “each day” or “every other day?” Come on, advertisers! Get it right next time!
After talking about how much the plants could yield each day, the commercial switches back into selling us into the concept of eating blackberries for the health benefits. But just after they establish that selling point, the commercial jumps right back and gets our hopes for up a massive daily harvest.
And how much of a blackberry harvest does it advertise?
“The high-yielding Sweet Dream Blackberry explodes to produce over twenty bowls a week and up to 5,000 from a single plant.” In case you couldn’t figure it out, “It’s like having a berry farm in your own backyard.”
So can we expect one of those blackberry plants to produce “over twenty bowls a week” once it’s fully grown and in its prime? Are we also talking about the same plant producing 5,000 berries a week, or is that more of a season’s total?
Up next we see the side-by-side comparison of “ordinary” blackberries versus those being sold in the commercial. There’s no mention yet as to the exact blackberry species, whether it’s a known plant species or something experimental.
The commercial then switches back and shows us how we can use blackberries in everyday meals. And instead of paying those high prices in the grocery store, the commercial states that these blackberries cost about five cents a pint. Hooray! Everybody just loves saving money, right?
About three quarters into the commercial we’re hit with the sales pitch.
The offer states that we can get two of the blackberry plants for $10 + p&h ($6.95) along with a free plant if we call within the next fifteen minutes (they probably have a stopwatch running each time the commercial airs to make sure you’re within the fifteen minute window), bringing the total number of plants to three. All we have to do is pay for additional p&h ($6.95) for the “free” plant. So if you time it right and can score the “free” plant (Oh, imagine to be that lucky!), all it’ll cost you for the order is a grand total of $23.90.
The company does offer a 30-day, 100% Money Back Guarantee if you have any immediate quality problems. Of course that refund guarantee is just for the $10 sale price and not $13.90 you’re also paying in p&h fees.
That’s about it for the company trying to sell us this product.
At no point did we see the plants when they were fully grown. All it really gave us was a very simple animation and the hope of a bountiful future.
At no point did it tell us the species of blackberry plant. As far as I know, there are about eight species of the plant with a range of sizes and harvesting seasons.
At no point did give any evidence on why that plant is supposedly better than any ordinary blackberry plant available in your local plant nursery, even if it’s a store like Walmart, Home Depot or Lowe’s.
Blackberries in various phases of ripening.
Take note that the commercial didn’t really give an expected time as to when to expect the massive, bountiful harvest of blackberries. It implies that it’s a fast growing process, but unless this is a super secret type of the plant, pretty much all species of blackberry plants need a full year to grow and you wouldn’t normally see a harvest until the second year and most likely not a major yield like the commercial implies until years three and beyond.
I don’t know about you, but if I’m going to shell out $23.90 for blackberry plants, I’m going to a local store where I can select my own plants, choosing the healthiest looking ones in the store. If there’s an immediate problem, it’s probably easier dealing with a local store versus a mail-order company.
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For more product information, please visit the company’s website, www.SweetDreamBlackberries.com.
Sweet Dream Blackberries is a registered trademark.
RellimZone.com is not affiliated with Sweet Dream Blackberries.
Great synopsis – talked me out of what would have probably been a regretful purchase
KC, my sentiment exactly! Thanks for helping me decide not to succumb to this bad choice I was thinking about making!
regrettably i was not as hesitant as you. i paid the $23.90 like a dumb —, and i received my 3 plants. they came in a little plastic bag, in a very small box and they were dead as could be, dried uo and brittle as a bone. the a-mail address they list on the order confirmation cannot be found, the phone # only allows you to leave a message (and i will definitely hold my breath till tthey return my call). if you may know of any way possible to get in touch with these “thiefs”, i would certainly appreciate tour letting me know. thank you. russ
Russ,
During initial research for this article, I couldn’t locate any information about the actual company behind SweetDreamBlackberries.com.
The Customer Service link on the company’s website lists a Toronto, Ontario address, a shopmaniatv.com e-mail address, and a 1-800 telephone number. Looking up all of that in the Better Business Bureau website for both U.S. and Canadian companies turned up nothing.
Best of luck trying to get in contact with them and getting a refund.