Lucozade Ribena Suntory (LRS) is giving away £5,000 cash to 12 retailers, for a total of £60,000, from now until the end of September as part of a new competition rewarding the independent channel.

The multi-brand activation is designed to encourage independent retailers to buy Lucozade Energy, Lucozade Sport and Ribena stock via wholesale depots this summer. The cash competition will be available across price-marked stock of LRS’ best-selling SKUs.

Retailers just have to visit www.lrsuntory.com/win and enter the details printed on promotional shrink-wrap of participating SKUs for a chance to win.

Lauren Maddocks, Shopper Marketing Manager at Lucozade Ribena Suntory, comments: “We’re really excited to launch this LRS-first competition and give something back to our loyal independent retail customers. On average, an independent store already generates in excess of £4,400 worth of sales through our portfolio of leading brands each year, but we wanted to reward retailers with an extra cash boost. With the hottest months of the year coming up retailers should stock up now to ensure their chillers are summer-ready, not to mention the chance to win a big cash prize!”

The competition began last week and runs until September 23^rd.

Lucozade Ribena Suntory (LRS) is one of the leading soft drinks businesses in the UK and Ireland. LRS was formed in 2014, and is part of Suntory Beverage & Food Europe. Its brand portfolio includes Lucozade Energy, Lucozade Sport, Fitwater, Ribena, Orangina and True Nopal cactus water.

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The Institute of Promotional Marketing (IPM) has announced the shortlist for The IPM Awards 2018, the promotional marketing industry’s most prestigious recognition programme.

Richard Pink, Head of Awards at the IPM, says: “We’re delighted to reveal The IPM Awards 2018 entries which have been selected by our first stage judging panels as being worthy of consideration for a Bronze, Silver or Gold trophy, or for one of our three special Awards. Our awards programme showcase the latest and greatest campaigns and work being delivered within the promotional marketing industry. We’re looking for those exceptional promotional campaigns that have displayed effectiveness, creativity and innovation in their field. We want to recognise and reward the blood, sweat and tears that go into delivering the best that promotional marketing has to offer.”

The IPM Awards 2018 shortlist – which can be seen in full on the IPM website – shows the breadth of mechanics, techniques and channels covered by promotional marketing, including classic promotions, shopper marketing, experiential marketing, partnership marketing, digital, and motivation and incentives.

The winners of the coveted IPM Awards – Bronze, Silver, Gold and the Specials, the Brand Owner of the Year, the Agency of the Year and the Grand Prix, for the best campaign of 2018 – will be revealed at The Awards Gala Dinner on 14th June 2018 at the London Hilton, Park Lane. Table Bookings are now open for what will be the biggest networking event for the promotional marketing industry in 2018.

The IPM Awards are the premier recognition platform for the UK promotional marketing industry and have been going for more than 40 years. The Headline Sponsor for the IPM Awards 2018 is Sodexo.

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Trebor is rerunning its Get Minted promotion for a second year. The convenience channel exclusive promotion will run from April 1st until June 17th 2018 with the aim of driving excitement and sales by offering consumers a chance to win one of 102 prizes, ranging from £50 up to a whopping £5,000.

Consumers can win by simply unwrapping Trebor packs and finding a ticket revealing if they’ve won a cash prize. For retailers who stock Trebor and display the Get Minted POS, Mondelēz International will match the value of each cash prize in stores where winning packs are purchased.

Get Minted was launched last year and succeeded in both exciting shoppers and driving sales with an increase of 8.5% in Independent and Symbol stores during the promotional period. This year’s promotion will be extended to include 2017’s new launches, Trebor Softmints Pots 100g and Trebor Sugar Free Mighties Megapack 44.5g.

Retailers will also be able to find advice on how to boost mints sales further on the Mondelez trade website, deliciousdisplay.co.uk.

Carly Sharpe, Brand Manager for Trebor, says: “Trebor is the UK’s number one mint brand and its single rollpacks sell faster than all other mints. Our latest competition will create excitement that will encourage consumers to purchase Trebor in store to give themselves, and the retailer, a chance to win big.”

Prize coupons will be hidden within selected wrappers of the following Trebor products: Extra Strong Peppermint, Extra Strong Spearmint, Softmints Peppermint, Softmints Spearmint, Softmints Peppermint, Softmints Spearmint, Mighties Mint, Mighties Berry Mint, Mighties Mint and Mighties Berry Mint.

The Trebor brand is owned by Mondelēz International, the global snacking company with 2016 net revenues of approximately $26 billion. Mondelēz is a world leader in biscuits, chocolate, gum, candy and powdered beverages, with power brands including Oreo and belVita biscuits; Cadbury Dairy Milk and Milka chocolate; and Trident gum.

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Confectionery brand Kinder is re-running its award-winning trade competition this Easter, offering retailers the chance to win one of five packs including everything they need to host an in-store Easter Egg Hunt for their local community, including posters for store windows, branded goods and free stock.

This year, retailers will also have access to bespoke social assets to drive further excitement in their community ahead of Easter.

Kinder was a key driver of growth for brand owner Ferrero over Easter in 2017, with its Kinder Seasonal range being the fastest growing brand amongst the top 10, reaching almost £20m. Kinder attributes this success at least in part to its Kinder Easter Egg Hunt is back.

To enter the competition, retailers must complete the form online at https://www.yourperfectstore.co.uk/  Entries opened from 9th March and winners will be announced towards the end of March, ahead of the activation of the Kinder Easter Egg Hunts between March 30th and April 1st – over the Easter Weekend.

Levi Boorer, Customer Development Director, Ferrero, says: “We’re keen to help our retailers give back to their local community, especially during the Easter period. Last year’s Easter Egg Hunt activity was a great success as retailers saw an increase in their Easter sales year-on-year, as well as increased basket spend compared to the previous week of trading. We are looking forward to seeing the results achieved this year and to spread a little joy this Easter.”

Ferrero is a leading family-owned global company and is the fourth-largest player in the global confectionery market. Its brand portfolio includes: Nutella, Ferrero Rocher, tic tac, Kinder, Kinder Bueno, and Thorntons.

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To celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday 11^th March 2018, Thorntons has been giving retailers the chance to ‘Pass the Love on’ with its latest competition, offering them the chance to treat the mother in their lives to a spa day.

Hosted on brand owner Ferrero’s trade website, Your Perfect Store, all retailers need to do to enter is to visit the ‘Your Rewards’ page on Your Perfect Store, fill out the application form and tell Thorntons why (in no more than 50 words) the special mother figure in their life deserves a spa day.

The winner will receive a spa day for two, to make Mother’s Day special, as well as a spa hamper and box of Thorntons Continental. In addition, five runners up will also receive a spa hamper and a box of Thorntons Continental.

Levi Boorer, Customer Development Director at Ferrero, says: “With this competition, we wanted to ‘Pass the Love on’ to our valued retailer community and Thorntons Continental Collection is the perfect gift for the Mother’s Day occasion.”

The competition opened at the beginning of February and runs until February 28^th.

Ferrero is the fourth-largest player in the global confectionery market and has been present in the UK since 1966. Ferrero’s brand portfolio includes Nutella, Ferrero Rocher, tic tac, Kinder, Kinder Bueno, and Thorntons. Ferrero’s multi-million pound acquisition of Thorntons in 2015 was part of its continued investment in the competitive UK market.

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When it comes to buying home and kitchen appliances, British consumers admit that the right reward is just as important to them as quality of product, according to new research.

The independent study of 2,000 British adults, commissioned by 360 Insights, a global leader in ‘Software as a Service’ platforms for marketers, found that 17% of consumers said their purchase decision was driven by a promotion, the same amount that identified product quality as the reason for their purchase.

The only factor deemed more important to consumers was product price, with 23% of respondents pinpointing cost as the main factor. The report also found that the internet is the most common place for consumers to find out about promotions and incentive programmes attached to home and kitchen appliances. 55% of respondents said that they heard about promotions online, as oppose to only 29% that had discovered them instore.

John Bird, UK General Manager at 360insights, says: “This research shows that rewards programmes are at the forefront of a consumer’s mind when purchasing home and kitchen appliances. With customers willing to substitute product quality for a reward, brands not offering an incentive programme run a serious risk of losing customers to rival brands that do.”

Bird adds: “This is worrying for brands that are spending considerable budget getting a customer to the point of purchase, just for that customer to switch to a competitor offering a promotion or reward. The brand is, effectively, spending money in creating demand that a rival company ends up benefiting from.”

360 Insights argues that with UK consumers’ main consideration being price, then promotions, a good price point in the market combined with a well-thought-out reward programme really will influence the buying decision of the customer.

360 Insights is a global Cloud-based provider of channel management software, incentive and promotional analytics and insights. UK clients include Bosch, Siemens, Neff, Stoves, Belling, Zanussi, Electrolux and Dimplex.

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Inflexion Private Equity has announced that funds managed by Inflexion have completed the buyout of Virgin Experience Days, the UK’s leading experiences business.

Virgin Experience Days offers curated experiences to consumers and corporates, from flying Spitfires to short luxury breaks, selling over 750,000 experiences annually. A high-growth business, revenue has doubled to £50m in three years, driven by a seamless tech-enabled customer experience and the ongoing consumer shift to sharing experiences over tangible goods.

Virgin Experience Days operates B2C and B2B divisions. Virgin Incentives, the B2B division, offers experience days for employee rewards and recognition programmes, with clients such as Barclaycard and Samsung.

As part of the buyout, Inflexion introduced leisure sector expert, Simon McMurtrie, as Chairman and the highly experienced Commercial Director, Matthew Briggs. Both will work alongside CEO Paul O’Brien who has led the business for over a decade. Inflexion will work closely with this team to create long-term sustainable growth.

Capitalising on our international reach, Inflexion will help accelerate sales into new markets with growing demand for personalised experiences, and support the re-launch of Virgin Incentives in the multi-billion-pound employee rewards and recognition market. Inflexion’s digital expertise will also help advance the company’s digital marketing strategy.

Paul O’Brien, CEO, Virgin Experience Days, says: “It’s been a pleasure leading Virgin Experience Days over the last 12 years, and I am proud of the successful business it is today. Inflexion shares our vision for growth, backed by their digital expertise and international reach; we look forward to a prosperous partnership.”

Tim Smallbone, Head of Enterprise, Inflexion, adds: “Virgin Experience Days is a globally recognised and respected brand with international growth potential. We’re delighted to back an ambitious management team in a sector where Inflexion has a strong track record, with businesses such as On the Beach, Reed & Mackay and Reward Gateway. This is the third investment this year for our Enterprise Fund that partners with high-growth businesses in the lower mid-market.”

The Inflexion deal team comprised of Tim Smallbone, Tom Pemberton, Shiva Tiwari and Robin Senivassen. Smallbone and Tiwari have joined the Virgin Experiences board on completion.

Inflexion is an award-winning UK mid-market private equity firm, investing equity of £10m to £150m in high growth, entrepreneurial businesses with ambitious management teams and working in partnership with them to accelerate growth. A mid-market specialist with bespoke teams and dedicated capital, Inflexion backs majority or minority investments in the lower mid-market, mid-market buyouts and provides minority solutions for larger mid-market companies through its dedicated Partnership Capital offering.

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How do you get the maximum amount of impact from an incentive program, asks Dan Kelly of Corporate Rewards.

Employee incentives are a great way to drive the performance of a team – offering a goal to work towards and rewards for staff can really help to drive continuing success. But there are some simple steps that employers should take to help maximise the impact of any incentive scheme.

Build Hype

Before the incentive program even starts, you should be trying to build interest among your team. Don’t just spring it on them as a surprise – let them know in advance what’s going on and why. That way, the incentive won’t seem like it’s just suddenly being dropped on them.

The idea is you build anticipation in order to make sure staff are enthusiastic going into the incentive, which is likely to make them more interested in participating and more motivated to work towards a goal.

This can really help to start your incentive off on the right foot, with staff ready and raring to go.

Identify opportunities to train

The incentive shouldn’t just drive staff towards a goal. It should also give you as the employer an opportunity to identify areas of weakness, and identify what steps you need to help train staff so they can improve their performance which, in the long run, benefits your business.

You might identify a problem throughout your team that needs to be addressed with a group training session; or you might discover smaller individual issues which can be remedied with one to one training or mentoring, such as refining sales technique, or reiterating how to use specific systems and processes within your business.

Reward throughout the incentive

While it’s a good idea to have a final grand prize, you should also be offering smaller rewards to staff on a daily or weekly level. This maintains excitement and interest, and also allows the reward element to be spread more widely across your employees. Acknowledging performance throughout the lifespan of an incentive can help to maintain momentum and motivation.

So consider offering rewards for the person with the highest sales during a shift, or the person who has made the most progress towards the incentive that week. The reward doesn’t need to be something big – a voucher or a small reward can serve as acknowledgement that the hard work being done.

Recognise High Performance

While you should be offering a range of incentives so that as many people can participate as possible, there should be a final ‘star prize’ incentive, and the person who gets it should be the staff member who has had the most consistent levels of high performance.

Their reward needs to be something substantial to highlight that hard work and effort are rewarded. This is often something major like a trip, or access to a major event. The aim is to provide a prize that people will wish they’d won, giving an extra level of motivation going into your next incentive program.

Maintain Momentum

Following the conclusion of your incentive scheme (assuming it’s not a rolling program), it is important to try and maintain the momentum and performance level it has created.

Continuing to recognise performance and running small incentives can help to do this. The key should be to begin to build hype and encourage staff to work towards fun, attainable goals. This helps to create much stronger foundations for future incentives to be successful.

Incentives can be a hugely rewarding undertaking, not just for your staff but also for your business in terms of increased sales, increased performance, higher morale and reduced staff turnover.

Dan Kelly is a founding partner and Sales and Marketing Director of Corporate Rewards, which offers a range of services for employers looking to run incentive and motivation programs for employees and channel staff, working with some of the world’s largest companies such as Microsoft and Dell in his position as Sales and Marketing Director.

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Mondelēz International is running a prize promotion for its Trebor mints range targeting the convenience channel, offering the chance for retailers and consumers to win cash simultaneously.

Running for three months from mid-March, the ‘Get Minted’ promotion offers consumers the chance to win from £50 up to £5,000 – and when a shopper wins, the store wins the same amount.

To win, a consumer must find a winning coupon in in a packet of Extra Strong Mints, Softmints or Mighties and call the number on the ticket to claim their prize.

A total of 102 winning packs of the Trebor product range (including Trebor Extra Strong Peppermint or Spearmint, Trebor Softmints Peppermint or Spearmint and Trebor Mighties Mint or Berry Mint) have been randomly distributed amongst stocks of regular Trebor products. When a consumer calls to claim their prize, Mondelēz will match up the records to establish which store the winning product was sold in and the retailer will be contacted.

As well as the possibility of a cash prize if one of their customers wins, participating retailers will also be provided with free POS and offered merchandising tips and advice, to help maximise the campaign and drive sales within the store.

The competition will be supported by the ongoing £3.4 million ‘Choose your Trebor’ marketing campaign, which includes TV ads and digital activity and runs between January and July. More TV advertising is planned for later in the year. The ‘Choose Your Trebor’ TV ad launched in April 2015 and was the brand’s first TV work in more than 10 years; it has been used for several campaigns since then.

Created by ad agency Wieden & Kennedy London, it revolves around a teenage boy admitting to his father that although they have always been an “Extra Strong Mint” family, he prefers soft mints. The camera then cuts to the father, who has been concealed in an armchair until this point, and reveals that he has an Extra Strong Mint for a head.

Carly Sharpe, brand manager for Trebor at Mondelēz International, says: “The advert has been popular since its launch in 2015 and it will continue to keep Trebor in consumers’ minds.”

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For brands and services that sell through third-party channels, creating a strong and effective incentive program delivers real benefits, says Adam Whatling of incentive and loyalty experts Love2shop Business Services

Building a strong third party sales channel is essential to success in certain industries, including the telecoms, technology and automotive sectors. It is vital to ensure your product or service stands out from the crowd; but that is easier said than done when channel salespeople are bombarded with a variety of rewards and bonuses. In this highly competitive environment, aligning third party salespeople with your brand to promote your solution over those of your rivals is a challenge.

It is essential to first consider carefully the persona of individual, or groups of, salespeople. A person selling mobile phones in a retail store environment is likely to respond to different incentives to sell one product over another than a sales person who is part of an expert consultative team delivering IT services to other businesses.

Also don’t forget that salespeople in different industries may be able to help your brand in different ways. So, for example, salespeople in automotive dealerships are in a position to cross sell add-ons from service plans to finance packages. Incentivising these staff regularly and effectively to make appropriate add-on sales makes all the difference to the bottom line and transforms consumers into brand advocates.

Sales staff in the channel such as mobile phone shops or car dealerships expect rewards and recognition as part of their remuneration.  Depending on the type of business, they may be participating in a number of different incentive schemes and accessing more than one online rewards and recognition portal, typically building up points with a number of suppliers to redeem for rewards later on.

There are a number of techniques vendors can use to make sure that sales staff are accessing your incentives portal that will not only drive sales but also support desired behaviours. These might include cross-selling appropriate products and delivering levels of customer service that build loyalty, rather than making one-off sales or, in a worst-case scenario, mis-selling financial products.

Here are six top tips to improve the effectiveness of channel incentives:

• Segment channel sales staff just as you would the end user customer base. That way, it is possible to design rewards and recognition that meet the specific interests and motivations of individuals or groups of employees. Less experienced marketers commonly fall into the trap of focusing purely on the top performing sales people. In fact, incentivising middle tier sales staff to improve their performance delivers the greatest benefits. It is worth further segmenting the middle tier of sales staff – people at the top end might just be able to aspire to the performance and top rewards of the highest selling salespeople. Employees at the bottom end, and underperformers, need to see lower value rewards that they can aspire to and achieve if they are to improve. Highflyers who are hitting targets halfway through the year need a reason to continue to perform well – be ready to offer add-ons to the main incentive, such as a room upgrade within a holiday reward.
• Send regular tailored communications. Personalised push notifications are key to drive salespeople to your incentives portal. For example, let people know that this week they have earned 90 points and if they just manage to win 10 more there will be a reward for them on the portal.
• Make good use of management information. Gather actionable data – and act on it. Set KPIs and check regularly that they are being met. Are sales staff opening your emails or responding to your texts? Are staff in one dealership or region of the country less engaged with your programme than others? Offering frequent lower value tactical rewards to drive performance in response to this data can supplement more generous annual rewards.
• Don’t undervalue the motivational impact of kudos. The most effective rewards are not always the most expensive. In one dealership, top sales staff responded well to the incentive of not only a fancy holiday but also the kudos of sharing it with top management.
• Add bells and whistles. Set your online rewards and recognition portal apart from the competition with engaging add-ons. Consider encouraging sales staff to visit the portal to undertake rapid and relevant training modules or simple quizzes on your USPs – in return for points or rewards, of course. Gamify rewards and recognition, tapping into the ‘local ladder effect’ – the human desire to increase social standing relative to others – in a way that creates healthy competition between sales staff.
• Don’t rely on online alone – press the flesh. Supplement your online portal with regular face-to-face contact. This might include going out on roadshows to demonstrate products in depth to sales staff and being there in person for product launches. Follow-up on these face-to-face meetings with communications that drive sales staff once again to the online portal.

Engaging customer-facing sales teams that are bombarded with promotions is vital. At the same time, channel marketing goals need to be closely aligned with consumer marketing by rewarding channel staff for the sales behaviours that reflect the values the organisation promotes to consumers. Tailored and frequent rewards and recognition are key to transforming channel sales people into knowledgeable ambassadors for your product and service.

Adam Whatling is Head of Engagement and Development at Love2shop Business Services, the corporate division of Park Group plc, which delivers customer and employee engagement boosting programmes that utilise enticing rewards in recognition of consumer actions and workforce achievements. For further information visit https://www.love2shopbusiness.co.uk/customer/channel-incentives

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