José Ignacio Gafo Gómez-Zamalloa

If you are a fan of Star Wars and you live in Spain, you are lucky: For 10 Euros you can get every weekend each of the six films of Star Wars in Kiosks, Departament Stores or Convenience Stores.

Well, in theory you could only get the movie if you purchase a very well-known newspaper. However, in practice this is not the case and you can get the movie whether you purchase the newspaper or not. Today it has been the fourth delivery, and it has been the fourth time I have been able to get the movie without newspaper in a fourth store.

The promotion was for sure well thought and designed. They launched it at the same time as the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, and promised to be a great success. However, it looks like they forgot about something that plays a key role and is even more important to me than planning and design: IMPLEMENTATION.

We tend to forget about it. And by experience I can tell you it makes the difference in the end of the day. In this case for instance, when designing the promotion you have to think carefully about how you are going to implement and control it, so that the retailers can only sell the DVD to those getting your newspaper.

For sure the newspaper has made a lot of noise with the promotion and has been able to get mind share. But in the end of the day, they have not been able to get the main objective: Switch customers from one newspaper to another.

In other words, you can have a perfect planning but unless you implement and control properly, your promotion is going to be a disaster.

Any learning experience in planning and implementing promotions?

Be the force with you, but watch out how you implement it!

Best.

Ignacio Gafo

Posted on 17 June 2007 in International Marketing, Trade Marketing & Retailing

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