IGA Sweepstakes Gives Retailers A Break, Offers Big Opportunity

ROSEANNE HARPER

CHICAGO — IGA has put its Holiday Recipe Challenge on hold and replaced it with a holiday sweepstakes that gives IGA retailers' customers a chance to win a big cash prize.

After years of getting its retailer-members to participate in a recipe contest leading up to the holidays, IGA has pushed that endeavor back to next spring. Instead, for the busy holiday season it has launched a straightforward sweepstakes that will give stores' customers a chance to win $2,007.

The new endeavor is aimed at making life easier for retailer members during the holiday run-up, while still giving them an opportunity to increase foot traffic and reward customers during the first part of the holiday season.

“We all know that the holiday retail sales season is the busiest of the year, and consequently, we've found that our retailers and their employees simply don't have the time to publicize and market a national cooking contest,” said Debra Bounds, IGA marketing specialist, in a statement to the press.

“We've simplified the ‘Hometown Holidays’ concept by providing a sales incentive, in the form of 10 substantial cash rewards, that allows our retailers to thank their customers for their loyal patronage.”

The Hometown Holidays idea of bringing additional customers into the store during November has certainly been kept alive. Indeed, a sweepstakes could be expected to pull in a wider cross-section of customers than the annual recipe contest did.

Here's how the sweepstakes will work: Each IGA retailer member will receive a kit of point-of-purchase materials in time to kick off the big new event on Nov. 18. They will build a display, including products from sponsors, and prominently display entry forms for customers to fill out and drop in a box.

At the end of the contest on Dec. 1, each participating retailer will draw one entry from the box and send it to IGA headquarters, where it will be combined with entries submitted from other IGA grocery stores across the country.

From that mix, 10 entry forms will be drawn. Each of those ten winners will be awarded $2,007.

The ease of setting up for the sweepstakes is a boon to retailers and still gives them the opportunity to increase traffic and offer their customers a chance at a generous reward for their loyalty to the store.

This is the first time a sweepstakes has been incorporated in an IGA Hometown Holidays event. For the past six years, the holiday event has been focused around a nationwide recipe contest. During those previous events, IGA retailers invited their customers to submit their favorite holiday recipes to win a chance to compete in cook-off finals in Chicago.

IGA's Bounds emphasized that the Recipe Challenge has not been canceled. It will return in the spring of 2008 as a tie-in to another annual marketing event, IGA Hometown Family Meals.

“Over the past several years, the Recipe Challenge has become a highly anticipated event in the cook-off circuit,” Bounds continued.

“For that reason, we didn't want to do away with the challenge entirely. However, we thought it made more sense to incorporate it into a merchandising period during which retailers would have more time to devote to the development of the program.”

This year's sweepstakes for IGA Hometown Holidays is the final marketing event in the alliance's 2007 IGA Family, Friends & Food marketing program. It's sponsored by the following IGA Red Oval manufacturing partners: Anheuser-Busch Inc., Campbell Soup Co., The Coca-Cola Co., Coca-Cola Hydration Business Unit, Con Agra Foods Inc., Georgia-Pacific Corp., The Hershey Co., Kraft Foods, Nabisco, Nestlé USA, The J.M. Smucker Co., Unilever and Minute Maid.

Retailers themselves have a chance to win a cash prize for the creativity and thought that goes into their displays surrounding the sweepstakes platform. A winning retailer also will receive recognition on IGA's Best Practices website.

Retailers' participation in the sweepstakes event has been made as easy as possible, IGA officials told SN.

The POP kit, for instance, will be sent automatically to all IGA retailer members. The kit includes easy-to-post items such as colorful banners, ceiling danglers and signs. Even a brightly colored poster for the employee break room is designed to get the whole team excited about the event, officials said.

IGA is the world's largest voluntary supermarket network, with aggregate worldwide retail sales totaling more than $21 billion annually. The Alliance includes nearly 4,000 “Hometown Proud” supermarkets and is supported by 36 distribution companies and more than 55 major manufacturers, vendors and suppliers.