Betting on Stikeez to build brand adhesion

CONFESSION time: it was the steamy summer of 1975, and I bunked out of a small-town Sunday school lesson my mother was giving to sneak around the corner to the Alma Café to empty out the metal bottle caps.

The Coke bottles with the silver lid had removable rubber seals that bore images from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. You attached the images to a chart, and there were prizes for the kids who sent complete sets to the company.

No parent in their right mind would allow any child to consume the amount of Coke required to fill the chart, so you had to be resourceful.

As a kid from the farm, I also needed to outmanoeuvre the town kids. Hence the grand plan to skulk off unnoticed somewhere between the plague of frogs and the plague of locusts. I forget who my accomplice was — all I know is that the dirty little scab bailed halfway and sang like a canary to my mother.

If only she had realised the investment potential of those Treasure Island discs. There is a full set of the 32 decals on an original Treasure Island entry form on Bid or Buy for R399.99. That’s not a bad return over 40 years.

Crazes are nothing new. They tend to be started by large corporations intent on selling more product. The idea is to build brand loyalty or, more accurately, encourage children to drive their parents to distraction.

A couple of years later Coca-Cola introduced branded yo-yos. Giant trucks would visit schools to give demonstrations on how to “swing the baby in the cradle” and “walk the dog” — all in the name of selling product.

More recently, Simba continued the tradition of boosting dentists’ revenues by inserting rigid plastic discs bearing Pokémon symbols into chip packets.

Pick n Pay’s recent introduction of Stikeez — a motley assortment of 3cm-tall rubber figurines bearing names such as Dolfy (a dolphin), Franky (after Frankenstein’s monster) and Cheezz (looks like a deranged piece of emmental) — has significantly divided public opinion.

While most see them as a harmless distraction, they do have some pretty serious detractors.

The concept, developed by Dutchbased Brand Loyalty Special Promotions, has been used to drive sales by other retailers.

German discount supermarket group Lidl is among 20 retailers, predominantly in Europe, that have run the promotion.

Pick n Pay insiders say the promotion has been a runaway success. The firm is in a closed period so won’t divulge the impact on sales, although it seems highly unlikely that Stikeez have boosted sales by 12% on R60-billion in annual turnover — as has been rumoured — in the weeks since launch.

The damn things are everywhere. Once kids have filled their albums, there is the overflow to make computer terminals more cheerful. They’ve been spotted on car dashboards and on the wine glasses of sozzled guests who need help remembering whether they are on red or white.

And, for once, Pick n Pay is the subject of a discussion beyond the grumpiness of the cashiers or the fact that it is neither fish nor fowl as it tries to carve a niche somewhere between Woolies and Checkers.

For Pick n Pay, it’s all about economics. About encouraging loyalty. About getting shoppers who might have drifted away engaged with the brand again.

And it’s about getting them to add items to the trolley.

A “free” Stikeez character comes with every R150 spent. That has to lead to bigger basket sizes, and, in households where kids are arithmetically gifted, ensuring that parents do less shopping around for bargains than they might otherwise have done.

Critics warn that they are a choking hazard and a distraction in the classroom.

Turns out kids are smarter than we think. For many, it’s an opportunity to learn to trade. It teaches lessons about networking and negotiation. It teaches about supply and demand, the fact that an item that is scarcer than another may have a higher value than one that is plentiful.

They also understand that it’s just another way to drive their parents mad.

Please, nobody tell them that there is a smartphone Stikeez app . . .

Whitfield is Sanlam Financial Journalist of the Year and the father of two Stikeez aficionados