WRBR and WKTV share Top Ads Award for Martin's Super Markets' text club

Attachments

Here's a copy of the language promoting the text club.

January's winners for LocalMediaInsider's Top Ads are from radio group, Federated Media, which helped a local grocery store chain to build its own text club and text discounts to its best customers; eventually 15,000 of them. Here is how they did it. 

Name of media: Federated Media, Federated Interactive

Company owner: Alec Dille, President/Owner, Federated Interactive
Key Executives: Deb Williams, Director of Interactive Sales, Federated Interactive; Kathy Uebler, General Manager, WRBR during campaign; Madeline Catanzarite, sales representative for WBYT. 

Markets: Michigan & Indiana

Advertiser: Martin’s Super Market 

Campaign: Martin’s Text Club

Objective:  Martin’s is a locally owned grocery store with 21 locations in Indiana and Michigan. Martin’s Super Market already had a strong customer base, but the store’s prices are often seen as more expensive compared to competitors. The company wanted a means to communicate it's lower pricing on specials to its customers on a regular basis. This campaign ran for several years, ending in 2012. 

Concept:  The key concept for this marketing campaign was to create an opt-in text-club to promote discounts to customers on an on-going basis.  The program relied on texting exclusive weekly deals with better prices on specific foods or vendors. 

Promotional distribution: Federated Media's radio stations provided two primary kinds of ongoing promotions to sign up text club members:

1. On-air promotions began on WRBR, an active rock station. Led by station manager, Kathy Uebler, the team created commercials that urged listeners to join Martin’s Text Club for weekly exclusive offers. Using the station’s SMS short code, listeners could text the number to receive the super market’s local deals every Monday. New members also received a $5 off coupon for $20 worth of groceries. 

2. Text-back promotion piggy-backed on WBYT  country radio's  pre-existing contest,  “Big Ticket Thursday, " managed by sales representative Madeline Catanzarite. During these promotions, on-air ads asked listeners to  text “ticket” to an SMS short code to enter to win a pair of tickets the station offered that week.

When a listener sent the text, the response text confirming their participation in the contest and included an offer to join Martin’s Text Club.

Results:  The ad campaigns were so valuable to Martin's that they ran for several years, and Martin’s Super Market developed a text club of more than 15,000 followers opted-in for weekly deals.  Martin's club  giving its stores  a unique  competitive advantage over other grocers without a means of direct mobile communications, and positioned its products with a unique value proposition to people interested both in quality food and also discounted groceries. 

Judges take:  This campaign won the top score because it does a lot of things well for the merchant. Upscale, independent groceries are the kind of unique local business that makes communities more livable, but which are often driven out of business by nearby superstores with high tech discount programs and percieved lower prices on staples.  

This concept creates a compelling value proposition for shopping at Martin's Super Markets,  virtually out of thin air: The text-club takes existing weekly discounts and specials  and send them to the store's best customers via text. This provides convenience, since it allows people with a preference for Martins to organize their purchasing around sales, and encourages both impulse buys and purchases of seasonal produce.

 We also like how the campaign was promoted in ads, and piggy-backed on the stations ongoing promotions.

And finally the results are not only substantial but also transformative: a 15,000 email opt-in list can certainly move the dial on weekly sales and the fact that the client renewed for several years. 

This is a good idea worth copying in other cities with independent grocery store chains. The two cash winners were identified by Federated Media as the two people with the largest role in developing the text club over time:

Congratulations to Kathy Uebler, above, who was station manager of WRBR at the time, for her role developing the campaign. 

Congratulations also to Madeline Catanzarite, sales representative for WBYT, who runs Big Ticket Thursdays, the text-back program that was also responsible for the Martins Supermarket achieving the 15,000 level.

The two will share January's $250 award, posted by the Reynolds Journalism Institute for excellence in local media advertising, every month through April 2013 (note:  enter a campaign here).  

LocalMediaInsider's Top Ad Awards are selected for excellence in three areas: Concept, Use of Multi-media disribution and interactivity and Results for customers.  Many thanks to all our contest sponsors who share the goal of excellence in local media advertising:

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