Picture This

A store promotion doesn't have to be elaborate in order to be successful. This is a lesson well understood by Penny and Dick Scheller of the Tannenbaum Holiday Shop in Sister Bay, Wisconsin (the 1999 Gold winner of Gifts & Dec's Merchandising Achievement Award for Community Service). Last year, when they were looking for ways to get people into the store, their eyes fell on Tannenbaum's green and gold shopping bag. It already served to establish the brand identity of the shop full of holiday merchandise, but it could do more.

The Tannenbaum team gave their customers a mission: to take one of the bags with them on their summer travels, take a photo of themselves with it, and mail or bring the photo to the store. The person who submitted the best photo would receive a $500 shopping spree. According to assistant manager Sandy Hand, the staff felt that this promotion would serve as a useful tool for bringing in customers, while giving people a chance at something in return. It would also build awareness of and reinforce brand loyalty for the Tannenbaum Holiday Shop, what with all the customers making a conscious effort to bring the bag with them and photograph it.

The Shopping Bag Contest 2000 ran from June through November. Thanks to newspaper ads and flyers announcing the competition, the entries quickly exceeded the staff's expectations. They were impressed not only with the breadth of travel of their customers, but with their willingness to tote a Tannenbaum bag along with them to the ends of the Earth. Photos poured in from Germany, Scotland, Switzerland, Hungary, Hong Kong, and Japan. They came from U.S. cities like New York, Philadelphia, San Diego, and Seattle. From Disneyland to Alcatraz, from the Eiffel Tower to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, a Tannenbaum customer was there, and so was a Tannenbaum bag.

Hand recalled that the staff was also impressed with the creativity of the entries. People placed babies in the bag, they brought it into the hot tub, they took it snorkeling and filled it with seaweed. One couple even brought it to their wedding.

In all, more than 300 pictures flooded in. Once the November 1 deadline had passed, the Tannenbaum staff set to work. They sifted through the pile of entries, choosing the top 12. Those select photos were mounted on tag board and displayed in the store alongside a photo album containing the rest of the pictures. Voting forms allowed customers to choose their favorite out of the 12 top shots. As it turned out, the customers enjoyed perusing the board and browsing through the fascinating scrapbook, seeing where their neighbors had gone … and perhaps dreaming of their own ideal vacations.

After a three-week voting period, the Tannenbaum crew tallied the votes. The numbers were so close that they turned the top seven photos over to an employee vote. Even the employees found it difficult to choose a single winner. In the end, they decided to supplement the top prize with two additional runner-up prizes of $50 shopping sprees. The runners up were Danny Merrick, the enterprising snorkeler, and Abby Breseman, who placed her shopping bag in the mouth of a cow wearing a Santa hat. The wedding couple, Sheri and Tony Piccolo, took top honors for making Tannenbaum part of their big day. The Tannenbaum staff sent out a letter notifying the winners, and they were in the shop the very next week, excitedly starting their shopping.

Sandy Hand feels that the photo contest generated a good amount of business, from customers who came in to buy something so that they could get a shopping bag. It also created excitement, she believes. "It got people talking," Dick Scheller said, adding that the word of mouth brought new people into the store. No doubt, the experience of taking the photos, perusing the entries, and voting created a sense of community spirit among the customers, and kept the Tannenbaum Holiday Shop uppermost in their minds.

While the store's sales during the contest period were comparable to those recorded the year before, Dick feels that the intangible benefits were more than worth the effort. He also suspects that the contest promotion helped Tannenbaum stay profitable in the face of increasing competition from new stores in the area.

For their part, the customers were delighted with the contest. At the beginning of this year, the Tannenbaum staff began fielding calls from patrons eager to know when the next photo competition would be. The result of all this enthusiasm? The 2001 Shopping Bag Contest is already underway.