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The Moodie Report sees many retailer promotions during the course of a year. One of the best, consistently, in recent years has been Bahrain Duty Free’s annual campaign linked to the Bahrain Formula 1 Grand Prix, first hosted in 2004.
That year Bahrain Duty Free won a well-deserved ‘Frontier’ award for ‘Best Marketing Campaign by a Retailer’ after launching its ‘Race 2 Win’ campaign. The following year a similar promotion won yet another Frontier accolade in Cannes (pictured below).
And, astonishingly, after a ‘gap year’ in 2006, Bahrain Duty Free went on to snap up yet another award in 2007 for its F1 campaign – this time called ‘The Magnificent Six’, a promotion in which the lucky winner of a prize draw drove away with six luxury cars (and an urgent need for a new garage).
In 2008 the Best Marketing Campaign went to Nuance-Watson Hong Kong’s outstanding ‘Lovable Panda’ promotion honouring the 10th anniversary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. Can Bahrain Duty Free bounce back this year? It won’t be for lack of trying. Last month it unveiled its 2009 vintage – simply called ‘Formula 2 Win’ (below).
The campaign offers travellers at Bahrain International Airport a chance to win discounts and instant cash via scratch-and-win prize cards for every BHD50 spent at Bahrain Duty Free. Consumers also earn the chance to enter a raffle draw for a cash prize of US$10,000 by submitting their ticket number online at Bahrain Duty Free’s website – www.bdutyfree.com
Once again the retailer has not strayed far from a clearly successful formula (in every sense). It is accessible to many buyers (BD50 is around US$130 at current exchange rates), while incentivising incremental spend. It builds on the excitement of a unique sporting event and it gets travellers engaging further with the retailer by luring them online. The scratch and win concept is popular all over the world and instantly understandable by consumers.
A 2009 Frontier candidate? Don’t count out the prospect of another winning formula.