The ROI Of Whole Hog Marketing Fun

Great article on a retail chain’s frankly ingenious marketing and customer service in the 1.29.07 issue of DM News, titled “Piggly Wiggly’s Fun Is Serious Business.”

Now never mind the questionable intelligence of naming a grocery store chain “Piggly Wiggly” in our overweight culture. But perhaps since it is one of the nation’s oldest grocery chains, the name reflects a more innocent (and thinner) time.

Hell, I wouldn’t shop there just because of the name alone. And it makes you wonder how the morbidly obese shoppers feel, trundling up-and-down isles with two shopping carts in tow crammed with enough pre-packaged, processed boxed foods and snacks to stock a small ‘legalize marijuana’ rally.

Here’s the interesting part from Bill Brohaugh’s article:

“Though it sound like a great name for a retro oldies band, I’m actually referring to loyalty program best practices when I talk about Pig Perks and the Perkolators.

Pig Perks is a loyalty initiative [blogger's emphasis] being tested by grocery chain Piggly Wiggly Carolina Co. (affectionately known as “the pig”) at selected South Carolina locations. Customers access Perks offers at front of the store kiosks. Not incidentally “kiosk” is a funny word, but it isn’t a fun word.

“We don’t like to call them to kiosks,” says Piggly Wiggly East Carolina Director of marketing. “We think they’re a lot more fun than that, so we called them Perkolators.”"

“Loyalty initiatives” [snort]. You gotta love marketing folk and how they forget that while you may call the garbageman a “sanitation engineer,” he still has to pick up the trash.

Here’s the link to the original article on DMNews.com: http://www.dmnews.com/cms/dm-opinion/columns/39950…