Quirky promotions help sell tax services

Looking for a barometer of what the public is thinking about these days? You could do worse than taking a look at the press releases that are flowing through William Puchert's fax machine.

Puchert, the marketing director for Jackson Hewitt Tax Service in northern Nevada, has made a specialty of finding promotional hooks in the pages of the newspaper.

Within hours after the University of Nevada, Reno made its first appearance in the NCAA basketball tournament, he rolled out his latest brainstorm: Anyone who wears Nevada Wolf Pack clothing into one of Jackson Hewitt's 22 stores in northern Nevada will get $10 off the price of tax preparation.

The deal, which runs until a champion is crowned in the NCAA basketball tournament, is only one in a long line of promotions cooked up by Puchert.

When casinos closed in Reno and Sparks in recent months, the company was quick to announce discounted tax preparation for laid-off employees.

Nurses and paramedics got a break during an appreciation week.

Next up for an appreciative discount were police and firefighters.

Clothing is big with Puchert.

Anyone wearing red into a Jackson Hewitt office got a discount at Valentine's Day.

Ditto for green-clad consumers at St.

Patrick's Day.

St.

Patrick's Day is particularly important in promoting Jackson Hewitt's business, Puchert says, because it falls close to the Ides of March exactly a month before tax returns are due.

Supporting the St.

Patrick's Day promotion this year were beer coasters distributed by the company to bars that drew St.

Patrick's revelers.

But does it work? "It all depends on the promotion," Puchert says.

"What we like to do is be on the cusp of community consciousness." And if the community is talking enough about a subject, there's always a chance that word of the company's promotion will be carried along.

"It helps to generate an awareness of the company," he says.

While some of the ideas originate with the company's corporate office especially for promotions centered on a holiday Puchert takes particular pride in the ideas generated by the Jackson Hewitt staff locally.

"If you focus your promotions locally, you tend to be more successful," he says.