A Turkey That Throws... Another Turkey?

Creativity + Fun = Turkey?

How does a 23 lb frozen turkey, being thrown in a warehouse by a sales rep dressed up in turkey costume, end up resulting in HAPPY CLIENTS?

We posted the other day about "thinking outside the box" when it comes to your marketing and strategic planning. Doing something different or unique might take a little more effort, but it can often be well worth it.

One of the things that can be easy to forget is the importance of having fun at work.

At American Retail Supply, we wanted to merge these two ideas in a recent promotion for Thanksgiving 2016. We knew that we wanted to do a promotion for our clients. We typically don't do that many promotions throughout the year, and usually don't do a straight x% off discount. But we wanted to try this kind of discount: 10% off every order, with a few exclusions.

Don't Underestimate Brainstorming

After settling on the offer, the hard part is always figuring out the best way to make it public. Even with great offers, people can often be fatigued by constant emails and even the most devoted follower can skim over your announcements. This is when we started brainstorming how to have some fun.

One of our employees suggested that we have a turkey throwing competition. Another suggested that we dress up in a turkey suit to announce it. Before long the ideas kind of... merged. We eventually decided that it would be hilarious to buy a frozen turkey, and have one of our sales reps dress up in a turkey suit. He would try to throw the frozen turkey as far as he could. If he threw it farther than ten feet, all our clients got 10% off their next order.

See the results of our wacky idea here:

As you can see, it didn't work as smoothly as anticipated. But that was all part of the fun. Not only did all of us in the company have a great time making this video, but it's also been a very successful promotion. We put it out in emails and social media to some great response. People paid attention to it and are taking advantage of a great deal.

The Benefits of Having Fun

It's easy for me to forget these two ideas: to have fun and be creative with business planning. There are plenty of times when business calls for a sober attitude and serious focus. But we were reminded this week that having fun at work has many benefits, both to your internal employees, and you external clients.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Bonus: Details of the Promotion

In case you want to craft a similar type of promotion, here some details from ours to get you started:

• Let the promotion run 10 days to 2 weeks. A normal promotion might only run a few days, but letting this one run longer gives you more of an opportunity to get the word out and get mileage out of the funny content.
• We did 10% off your next order.* We made a maximum limit of $50 off and also put in that an order had to be a minimum of $200. This is all relative to your context. Depending on your goals and the kind of reward you want to give to your existing clients, you usually want to craft these to apply to the majority of your clients, but target a specific segment. Those clients will appreciate the care you put in to the details of the offer.
• We used social media and email to promote. Having an image is usually helpful. We like to use Canva. It's a great tool for designing stuff like this quickly. Lots of elements are free and the ones you may need to pay for are usually only $1. 
• We took extra pictures and video. When doing a project like this, it's always best to have more content than you actually need. Nothing worse than going back and re-doing it because the image was blurry.
• Try to build up momentum. If you look at our social media pages, especially Facebook and Instagram, you'll see that we post pictures of the Turkey in various places around our building. This makes it personal and fun, and also helps people get engaged with your brand. Again, a key is to keep it fun and interesting.