Fun and frolics down the aisles

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Having read your Cover Story “Few benefits on the cards” (MW July 5) I felt a humble plea to retail marketing directors was appropriate.

Today buzzwords and phrases fill our vocabulary. Loyalty marketing is the most over-used and popularised of the many applied by thrusting marketers. Couldn’t we consider simplifying jargon and refer to the spate of discount cards as good old-fashioned money-off?

Unfortunately, price reduction has always been the final refuge for battle-weary sales promotion teams and displays real paucity of imagination. The poor old shoppers – I occasionally go and suffer – need pizzazz and excitement to entice them to their local stores.

We all know prices don’t vary too much, so please attempt to bring some enjoyment and fun into what has now become a painfully bruising chore (how many times do I have to endure clipped ankles from metal trolleys).

Ask the shoppers how the experience of parting with our hard- earned or ill-gotten gained money can be improved.

Look to fun and offer real tangible rewards by flexing your purchasing muscles, and perhaps we’ll all begin to look forward to the “purchase action” again.

Julian Lyons

Managing director

Innovative Marketing International

London NW1