I want to thank everyone for coming into the office over your holiday to hear my pitch. As we all know, fourth quarter growth was way down year-over-year and we're getting ready to head into our slow season. We need to make a big first quarter splash if we're going to get our product segment back on track this winter.
Granola isn't a sexy product. We know that now. We've heard that sex sells, but when we tried it last fiscal year we saw limited success. You remember, Don. We made the granola packaging look like a two-piece swimsuit. You had to 'take the top off' to open the packaging. It did nothing to increase sales. We just ended up with lots of spilled granola and some angry emails from Patrick in HR.
When that failed, we tried to tap into the highly profitable millennial market. At the bottom of each tub of granola was the hashtag #GranolaMe. All the customer had to do was tweet us the hashtag and we'd send them granola. In hindsight, the only people to receive the hashtag are those who already had granola, so it was less effective than hoped. The two to three week wait for granola delivery wasn't doing the campaign any favors either. Apparently millennials hate waiting for granola more than they love hashtags. Lessons learned.
The good news is that I've got a plan. If we execute it well, we could reach the year's sales goals in the first three months. It's all about leveraging the power of weathermen. We reallocate a significant portion of our marketing budget to target local weathermen. Just before every snow storm, we'll pay to have them suggest on-air that everyone 'rush to the store for milk, bread, AND granola.' It's exactly the brand angle we've been looking for. We'll make granola a necessity. A staple. It's perfect because the consumer is already getting milk. And, milk goes together with granola like steak and eggs; it's a great combination but you're not always thinking about it. I'm tired of going to the store and seeing an empty bread aisle and a completely full granola section, adjacent to the breakfast cereals. Bread and milk could both go bad during a long snowstorm; granola pretty much lasts forever. Granola is snow food.
With the board's approval, I'd like to move on this initiative immediately in all of our major markets. We already started to reach out to weathermen and the response has been overwhelmingly positive, especially after presenting the minimum contract of $30,000 per snowstorm. We'll probably want to prep our suppliers so we can keep the shelves stocked during the inevitable sales surge. This is going to be really big for us. Really big for granola.
If for some reason this doesn't work out, I say let's just pack it in. I don't think anyone will miss us.