Coupon campaign boosts Tanqueray sales by hooking the mobile generation

A mobile coupon-based campaign helped to boost sales of premium gin label Tanqueray® London Dry Gin at Col’Cacchio pizza restaurants by over 500%, thanks to the ease of use and point of sale integration offered by wiGroup’s platform, wiPlatform.

“It was a very successful campaign,” says Tanqueray® Brand Manager Kate Mederer of brandhouse, SA’s leading total alcohol beverage company. “The brand wanted to encourage consumers to consider Tanqueray® as their first drink of the evening. We decided to use mobile coupons to offer a R20 discount on their meal to Col’Cacchio consumers who ordered a Tanqueray® and tonic or similar Tanqueray based drink.”

Mederer said making the mobile coupons easy to use for both consumer and waitrons was key to the campaign’s success. “For the consumer, getting their coupon was a simple matter of SMSing a shortcode printed on placemats and posters. We had an exceptionally high redemption rate of 84%, which tells us that the technology worked and was easy to use.”

For waitrons the process was equally easy at the till, says Mederer. “Because the wiGroup system is integrated with the point of sale software at Col’Cacchio, all the waitron had to do was enter the customer’s coupon code at the till to get instant validation of the discount – and an automatic check that there really was a Tanqueray® product in the basket. It was accurate and easy to use.”

The fact that wiPlatform is integrated with the POS not only made sales easy, it also meant the campaign team could get detailed real-time information: “Everything was measurable,” says Mederer. “We could break sales down easily by day of the week and month, time of day and types of drink ordered. This was all invaluable feedback for the brand.”

The campaign was high-risk, acknowledges Mederer: “If any of the technical links had broken it would have generated bad publicity. For example, if a code didn’t arrive in response to an SMS, or the waitron didn’t know how to process it or the deduction didn’t go through at the till, the consumer irritation would have spread at Internet speed. But everything worked very smoothly, and the waitrons at Col’Cacchio were trained and assisted in a very smooth execution. We were fortunate to have a customer and partner like Col’Caccio who allowed us to integrate this in their stores. Not only a first for Tanqueray®, but for Col’Caccio too. The wiGroup platform really proved its worth.”