FTD UPDATES IMAGE
By Adnews Staff
Florists' Transworld Delivery of Bloomfield Hills, Michigan launched a North American TV and print campaign with a new look yesterday. The ads were created by recently-hired Grey Advertising of New York whose Toronto office did the media buying for Canada. The new campaign is aimed at sprucing up the image of FTD which has watched its market dominance weaken during the past few years. After 85 years of being almost alone as a flowers-by-wire provider it is now facing competition from a number of companies. For years FTD used former football player Merlin Olsen in its ads. The new campaign focuses on bouquets with a theme, such as Autumn Harvest or Friendship. One commercial for the Friendship bouquet opens with two girls whispering to one another in a field of daisies. The voice-over says, "She could never keep a secret from me. We wanted to be princesses and astronauts. When she moved, it was only two streets. I though my heart would break. In college, they thought we were sisters, but we were closer." The flowers in the ads have definitions. For example, a daisy means innocence, a lily means devotion and a tulip means luck. The final shot in all the commercials is of a rose opening to a slight redesign of the FTD logo which is still the Greek god Mercury. FTD was a non-profit association of 23,000 florists until it was bought by Perry Capital of New York last December.