Snyder Drug, Bonnie Bell join forces for successful teen color promotion

Drug Store News, August 18, 1997 by Liz Parks

MINNEAPOLIS -- To Peggy Williams, cosmetics buyer for Minneapolis-based Snyder Drug Stores, teenage girls are a highly desirable target market. But, teens tend to buy their beauty care products in discount department stores. Last year Williams went looking for marketing programs that could make Snyder Drug Stores a destination center for female teens.

Enter Lakewood, Ohio-based Bonne Bell, a leading manufacturer of cosmetics and skin care products targeted to teens. Early last year, Bonne Bell partnered with Snyder Drug to create a teen-oriented color promotion that won a NACDS/Glamour magazine Glammy award at this year's Marketplace convention as best promotion by a chain drug store in the small chain category.

Based on Snyder's point-of-sale data, unit sales during the month-long promotion increased 23 percent, dollar sales increased 24 percent and margin dollars climbed 27 percent.

In the three-month period immediately following the in-store event, unit and dollar sales and margin dollars continued to increase--29 percent, 30 percent and 35 percent, respectively.

Williams called the promotion a major success, and said that Snyder will probably do similar events with Bonne Bell in the months to come. She also said that Bonne Bell has been growing at a healthy rate ever since the fine was added to Snyder's cosmetics walls in its 70 corporate stores almost three years ago.

Williams attributed the success of the promotion and Bonne Bell's growth to its on-going support for Snyder Drug.

"Bonne Bell supports everything so well, planogram revisions, changes, new initiatives," she said. "They just don't do a program and walk away. We have a very good rep, very energetic, very enthusiastic. They're behind us all the way."

Williams also said Bonne Bell makes an ideal partner in developing programs that target teens. "Their advertising. Their awareness. Everything they do is for teens. They do on-going market studies and they continuously supply us with very good data about teens."

Before developing the Color Crew promotion that won a Glammy, Bonne Bell researched the growth of the youth and teen population in the Minneapolis/St. Paul market, where Snyder Drug operates 52 corporate drug stores.

The research found that between 1990 and 1995, the population of female teens aged 13 to 16 in that market jumped by 7 percent. By the millennium, the research projected, in that marketing area, female teens in the 13- to 16-year-old range are expected to grow by a whopping 13.3 percent.

Teen representatives

In the Snyder promotion, Bonne Bell used the services of a local marketing company to recruit a team of young girls who could represent Bonne Bell and be ambassadors for Snyder Drug.

Each girl was trained by Bonne Bell on product knowledge, sales techniques and customer service tactics

On weekends, from Aug. 16 through Sept. 14, each girl worked three hours in one of the 52 Snyder stores. Snyder promoted the event with in-store signs and ads featuring specials on Bonne Bell products in its circulars.

The girls also told their friends about their role in the promotion, generating what Williams called "valuable word-of-mouth advertising."

For the month of the promotion, the girls set up workstations near the 3-foot Bonne Bell section in Snyder's cosmetics department. They were armed with colored pens, locker mirrors and coffee mugs, all featuring the Bonne Bell "Color Flavor" logo, which they gave away as gifts with purchases. They also gave away cents-off coupons as well as samples of Bonne Bell's Lip Cafe and Cafe Colors promotional shades in flavors such as Cafe Latte, Biscotti, Java and Express-yo-Self.

Bonne Bell and Snyder also supported their efforts with an advertised temporary price reduction on Bonne Bell lipsticks and lip glosses during the promotion, outdoor marquee signs, window. and cosmetics signs, display contests and tagging on the Bonne Bell website (www.bonnebell.com), which, among other things, shows consumers where they can buy Bonne Bell products.

Williams said Snyder learned from the promotion that the biggest increases in customer traffic came in the last half of the promotion. "We saw our biggest gains in September, after school opened," she said, "and that may be a function of word of mouth, because we had teens talking to teens and the word about the program spread quickly."

Even though the Bonne Bell promotion was a huge success for Snyder, Williams said the chain still isn't "close to getting the teen traffic we're after. Bonne Bell gave us a push, but now we've got to keep the momentum going."

Williams said Snyder will definitely be doing more to attract teens as the months go by. The chain is building a database of teen shoppers on a store-by-store basis. As part of the promotion, the Color Crew teens signed up teen shoppers for both the Bonne Bell and Snyder frequent shopper programs.

Snyder and Bonne Bell collected valuable statistical data, such as the names, addresses, ages, birthdays and shopping preferences of the teens who responded to the promotion.