Cape Town - Fun freebies for children and selfie fodder for adults: toys that retail supermarkets give out at the tills have taken over social media. But take a peek behind the gimmicky toys and you will find an enormous amount of strategy, data and money, said marketing and business strategist Jonathan Cherry.
Three major retailers - Checkers, Pick n Pay and Spar - have campaigns running which offer customers a freebie when they spend over R150.
‘”It looks like fun and games for children, but there's a lot of info and stats behind the campaign,” Cherry said. It’s not just people sitting round a table thinking that'll be fun.”
In the wake of the Stikeez campaign, which had children begging their parents to shop at Pick n Pay last year, retail chains are cashing in on the adage that the way to parents’ purses is through their child’s latest obsession.
“It’s bordering on something which might be seen as unethical, but that's a debate,” Cherry said. “It is a controversial thing but at this stage in South Africa it’s still legal to target children in this way.”
Cherry said that some US states had banned toys from McDonald’s Happy Meals because authorities felt it was too manipulative.
But Shoprite Checkers said that the Little Shop campaign was aimed at people of all ages, and not children in particular.
“From the feedback we are receiving both in-store and on social media, both children and adults alike are responding very positively to the promotion
“Checkers Little Shop is a fun way of rewarding our loyal customers as well as celebrating the brands that have become part of our everyday lives. It is also an opportunity for children to learn about entrepreneurship - we believe that the education and play development nature of Little Shop can be beneficial for kids’ learning,” the retailer said.
Checkers is offering 29 miniature replica grocery items for customers young and old to collect, swap and, inevitably, take selfies with. The #CheckersLittleShop promo has taken off on social media, with collectors getting creative and posing figurines from Barbie to a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle with the mini groceries.
Spar is punting its Angry Birds campaign, where for every R150 spent the customer receives one of 24 collectible 3D cards.
Meanwhile, Pick n Pay has launched its Super Animals collectible card promo, which gives customers a pack of four cards to be traded and swapped. The cards link to a cellphone app which translates the Big Five into Augmented Reality characters that you can pose for a selfie with.
Pick n Pay customer and trade executive John Bradshaw said they hoped the Super Animal cards would be an adequate follow-up success story to the Stikeez craze.
“Everyone - from investors to our own kids - has been asking us what comes next after Stikeez,” Bradshaw said. “We think we have found something fun and collectible that our customers and their families will really enjoy.”
He also spoke about the latest innovation in freebies: tie-in with a smartphone app.
“We are really excited about the app,” Bradshaw said. “It is built by a team in Cape Town and we think it is better than anything of its type that we have seen in the world. Kids will be absolutely blown away when they scan in the Big Five in this app.”
But Cherry said that, here again, there was a benefit for the retailer: “If you can get kids online and potentially mine some data from them while they’re there, you’re killing many birds with one stone. We live in the age of big data. The most valuable thing a retailer can get from a customer is information. The more info they have as to shopper behaviour, the more they know when to stock what.”
People will often grab their groceries at whichever retailer is closest and most convenient. Many are loyal to brands that are stocked across retailers - for example, it likely won’t matter much to you whether you buy your Sunlight soap at a Spar or a Pick n Pay.
To make customers loyal to a particular retailer, they use tools to differentiate themselves. One of these tools is lowering prices, and another is running incentives such as a free toy at the till.
“What they’re really trying to do is give consumers an incentive to shop at a specific retailer,” Cherry said.
But these are not homemade campaigns most of the time, he said.
“They don’t come up with these strategies by themselves. They purchase the rights to use these strategies, and it’s not a cheap exercise.”
Pick n Pay’s Super Animal cards come from the Netherlands, he said, and the Angry Birds campaign has been sold to various supermarkets around the world.
Cape Argus