As someone who is still scrambling to finish her holiday shopping and will be pleased to manage a New Years day deadline for dropping greeting cards in the mail, Restaurant.com’s most recent push caught my eye. In an event they are calling “National Freedom from Shipping Week” the online coupon provider has given me and my fellow procrastinators one more tool in our gift-giving arsenal. Beginning tomorrow and running until Dec. 25, the site is reminding consumers that its variety of gift certificates from more than 8,500 restaurants nationwide requires only a printer or can be passed along by e-mail directly to the recipient. This “no shipping necessary” gift trumps all other widely publicized last-minute holiday shipping dates. This campaign, which merely provides new context for Resturant.com’s basic offering, strikes me as marketing at its finest: giving a specific target audience (i.e. gift-givers with no time and money to spend) a reason to visit the site.
– Cara Wood
