Mike Donohue isn’t the kind of guy who enters contests.
The 29-year-old firefighter, a lieutenant at a BP oil refinery in Toledo, has always assumed that filling out entry forms only results in unwanted telemarketing calls and junk e-mails. So at last year’s Fire Department Instructor Conference & Exhibition in Indianapolis, the bike enthusiast never even considered throwing his name in the box at the Fire-Dex booth.
Not even the grand prize — a $60,000 firefighter-themed machine custom-built by Orange County Choppers, the manufacturer featured in the TLC reality show American Chopper — could sway him.
But the refinery’s assistant fire chief insisted Donohue join him in a race through an inflatable obstacle course wearing the Medina-based company’s protective firefighting gear. And completing the course came with an entry.
“Nobody had a crowd like Fire-Dex did,” Donohue says. “It was quite a spectacle.”
A couple hundred conventioneers were at the booth. Some were checking out the bike and lesser drawing prizes: three sets of Fire-Dex products autographed by Orange County Choppers founder Paul Teutul Sr. Others were waiting in line to don Fire-Dex coats and pants before entering the obstacle course, two at a time.
Donohue, of course, was stunned when he learned he won the motorcycle.
Fire-Dex executives weren’t surprised by reaction to the contest, though. Chairman and chief executive officer Bill Burke (pictured above) says the promotion has been phenomenally successful in getting firefighters to try on Fire-Dex gear at the world’s largest firefighter-training conference. Nearly 1,000 people completed the obstacle course and entered the drawing at the three-day event in 2009. And many apparently agree with Donohue’s assessment that the gear is “real comfortable stuff.”
“We’ve enjoyed double-digit growth in a down economy,” Burke says. “It’s very difficult, obviously, to tie that back directly to this one promotion. We’re doing lots of different things throughout the year. But it has been very helpful in making sure that every firefighter who attends FDIC knows who Fire-Dex is.” He adds that although competitors haven’t yet come up with similar FDIC promotions, “they wish they had come up with it first.”
In the years before the “Take the Fire-Dex Challenge” promotion was implemented, Burke says the company’s main marketing effort was paying a couple hundred thousand dollars to have a little sticker on a NASCAR. “We were much less known than we are today,” he says. He estimates a mere “several dozen people” used to actually take the time to try on Fire-Dex apparel at any given trade show.
In 2006 Fire-Dex decided to switch gears and hired Cleveland public relations firm Edward Howard to develop a more effective promotion. Although Burke had never heard of Orange County Choppers or Paul Teutul Sr., he liked the challenge approach that account executives proposed. It was a fun activity that provided firefighters with an opportunity to actively maneuver in Fire-Dex gear and experience its lightweight feel and flexibility.
He describes the obstacle course, made by Inflatable Images in Brunswick, as “the kind of thing you would rent for a kid’s birthday party.” It required participants to dive through a “doughnut hole,” scale a wall, climb a rope ladder, and ring a bell. Having Teutul in the booth to sign autographs for a day served as an additional draw.
Some changes have been made to this year’s challenge. The rope ladder has been swapped for a vinyl strip with tire imprints participants have to high-step through — an obstacle better suited to trying out Fire-Dex’s new boots. The company is making a donation to the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation instead of bringing Teutul in for a day of autograph-signing. And the motorcycle has been replaced by a Ford F-150 STX pickup truck with a custom decal paint job.
“It’s actually about half the price of an Orange County Chopper,” Burke says. “And we felt the pickup truck would have greater appeal. I’m sure some firefighters walked by our booth and said, ‘Oh, my God! If I won that thing, my wife would kill me.’ ”