THRIFTY BOOSTS RENTALS WITH GIVEAWAY

MICHAEL SLEZAK

BURLINGTON, Wash. -- Thrifty Food Stores here has boosted rentals on the MGM video "Undercover Blues" and generated excitement in its video department with a sunglasses giveaway promotion.

The promotional drawing gave Thrifty customers a chance to win four pairs of Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses like the ones featured in "Undercover Blues" and valued at $84.60. It was not necessary to rent a video to enter the drawing.

Thrifty's 10 video departments promoted the giveaway during the month of May by featuring the MGM spy comedy in local newspaper ads for four weeks and by creating in-store displays where consumers could drop their entry forms.

Rentals for "Undercover Blues" got a boost from the promotion, said Sandy French, video coordinator for Thrifty.

"The video has rented really well. People have been excited about the sunglasses," she said. "There are a lot of filled-out entry forms. They haven't sent them all to the office, but in one store there's already a whole grocery bag full of entries, a big barrel bag. That's quite a few entries."

French said she thought the promotion was popular with customers because "people get excited over anything they can get for free."

Thrifty planned the promotion with their video supplier, Ingram, as well as MGM and Bausch & Lomb, the makers of Wayfarer glasses.

"MGM printed up entry boxes for all of our stores that say 'MGM, Bausch & Lomb and Thrifty Food Stores, enter here to win,' on them," said French. "Not only did MGM print the ballot boxes but they printed the entry forms, personalized for each of Thrifty's store trading names."

The work for French and her staff was minimal, she said.

"We did displays in each department and I just had to go around and take pictures of the departments to send to MGM to justify doing this. And we upped our buying on the title," she noted. "We upped each store two more copies of each title than we normally would."

French said Thrifty has been making an effort to capture special video promotions on a quarterly basis. "We have a breakfast meeting once a quarter and it's usually with a studio that puts it on with our Ingram rep," she said. "Ingram gets the studios to come to the meeting and all 10 of my video department managers come, too. The studio brings screeners, T-shirts and promo ideas. And we sit down and talk about promotions we'd like to see.

"It's a way the video department managers can get to touch base with the studios," added French. "Usually I meet with them, and get the word back to the managers."