An Appetite for Growth

From Fruitcake to Pecan Cake

While its first coffee test bore out the 40/40/20 rule, its last creative test, according to Means, “turned that rule right on its head.”

At Hennerberg’s advice, the company tested new creative on the repositioning of its core product, the DeLuxe fruitcake, and in its 2002 prospecting efforts renamed it a Native Texas Pecan Cake. Instead of focusing on traditional fruitcake nomenclature, the copy zeroed in on its unique selling proposition: native Texas pecans. When the first round of results came in, the test mailing outpulled the control to such a great extent that Means retested it to verify the results were, indeed, that good. “We were afraid we had some kind of merge/purge error,” Means explains.