 "Santhosh Unni")
What has been the most interesting sales promotion you have engineered so far?
While we have been running promotions across our stores for many years, the newly launched Happy Hours promotion is the most interesting one. Happy Hours is Costa Coffee's global sales promotion campaign, which is tweaked according to the market it is rolled out in. The main objective behind this campaign is to push consumption during the unproductive hours at the Costa Coffee outlets. For instance, while some markets have low footfalls during morning hours, others have outlets where sales dip during lunch hours. This low footfall time-window can vary across markets or across outlets spread within the same market.
Let us look at one of the Happy Hours promotions we ran in the UK last year. The coffee chain started the conversation on Twitter. Every Monday and Wednesday, between 2.00 pm and 4.00 pm, Costa Coffee asked customers to share what made them happy in 140 characters. Customers could 'tweet' their favourite jokes, pictures and stories. Three £5 gift cards were given away every Monday and Wednesday.
As part of this promotion in India, we slashed the price of every item in our menu by 50 per cent after 8.00 pm. We kick-started the promotion in the end of July and ran it till September-end.
Who is the primary target for the promotion?
In India, coffee chains don't make significant revenues after 6:30 pm. So we began by giving a reason to this set of coffee lovers to stay longer. Next we targeted families who could come to our outlets for post dinner dessert.
Why was the promo designed in such a manner?
The idea of Happy Hours in a coffee chain is clutter-free to the core. Usually consumers associate the concept with bars. For some reasons, consumers think of Costa Coffee as a premium brand. The promotion gave us an opportunity to change this mindset by getting more people to sample our brand.
Can you elaborate on the media plan?
While we took space on a few hoardings, all the publicity for Happy Hours was driven at the store level. Most of the outlets focused on pamphlet distribution. Interestingly, many outlets had look-walkers hovering in the vicinity.
What were the challenges?
There were no challenges in executing this simple idea. I believe the real challenge always begins once the promotion is over. The promotion resulted in incremental sales at lower margins. Now all the stores where the promotion ran will have to keep the momentum going.
Can you give an idea of the impact of these schemes on the sales and brand?
Earlier, some outlets did only 20 transactions after 8.00 pm. This changed to 60 transactions during the Happy Hours promotion. After the end of the promotion, the number of transactions across most of our stores stands at 30. Since 80 per cent of Costa Coffee outlets ran the promotion, the footfalls across some of the stores have increased by 40 per cent.
Will such schemes work in the future?
Why not? We are not known as a discounted brand. Doing something like this can sporadically can create the desired buzz. The good thing is while designing sales promotions you do not always have to blow your brains out to create a compelling proposition. Many times simple ideas can work wonders. For instance, during new store openings we invite coffee lovers for a free cup of coffee. Or some stores have created buy-one-get-one-free offers to increase footfalls. These simple initiatives have created opportunities for us to understand and have one-on-one conversations with consumers.
Don't sales promotions harm a company/brand in the long term?
I don't think this happens. All big brands from India, the UK and the US have been investing in sales promotion activities consistently.
