Here's my take on this year's disaster.
Pete,
As several others have said, the system is fine. It needs a bit of tweaking on allocation. This project needs some guidelines from you to make sure the online fans are able to get some as well.
1). I would distribute all boxes to the unlucky 13 like the Franks. There's too many retailers, and giving each store a few boxes is going to encourage them to break them up and sell singles. I think the full allocation should go to the unlucky 13. That way they will have a larger allocation and won't feel pressured to keep the entire allocation to their loyals and instead keep some for them, and open the rest up for phone-in on a first-come, first-served basis.
2). I think the CRA, club, sign-up deals are just not right. You're adding an additional layer of work for yourself and possibly limiting so many shops or people in the process. Monster is Tatuaje's brainchild, not CRA's. You made the LE Black toro for CRA and that should be enought for them, for now. You don't want to make such a radical change from year-to-year. Just tweak the formula a bit. It worked out fantastic last year, there's no need to reinvent the wheel with solutions that could cause delays or problems.
3). I think the problems this year were from B&M's treating this as their own personal promo. Forcing customer to buy boxes so they could pre-order Dracs or bundling them up was just rediculous. I'm also against free for alls on opening day. In the end, you're just going to have a bunch of people leave empty-handed and it's the Tatuaje brand that suffers.
4). The spooky tickets was not the best idea. Again, it just encourages shops to break open the boxes to find the tickets for themselves and then either sell the opened boxes, or just break them up in singles. The cigars were going to sell themselves, I don't think having a 1 in 1300 chance to win a Ducati was going to make a difference for the true fans that wanted to buy a box.
I belive a simple thing you can do to avoid so many problems is you need to send a memo to all 100 shops before selection just to give them a criteria as to allocation and ground rules for selling them if they are selected. That way, the unlucky 13 that are picked will be better prepared and will follow your rules.
With this series, the B&M's are being rewarded by your project and being included. But if they in turn reject all of us online people and use it as a way to reward their loyals, then they just ignored a whole online community who are Tatuaje fans. I think you really need to ask yourself what you want for the Tatuaje brand. It's your brand and you have a lot invested to let the B&M's tarnish the reputation for the sake of them rewarding their loyals. I personally think the locals to the individual shops had just as much of a chance to buy as anyone online. The revenue from box sales and online exposure should be enough of a reward to B&M's. I bet if B&M's treated the online people better in this scenario, the people would turn to these same B&M's when they can repay the favor.
Pete,
As several others have said, the system is fine. It needs a bit of tweaking on allocation. This project needs some guidelines from you to make sure the online fans are able to get some as well.
1). I would distribute all boxes to the unlucky 13 like the Franks. There's too many retailers, and giving each store a few boxes is going to encourage them to break them up and sell singles. I think the full allocation should go to the unlucky 13. That way they will have a larger allocation and won't feel pressured to keep the entire allocation to their loyals and instead keep some for them, and open the rest up for phone-in on a first-come, first-served basis.
2). I think the CRA, club, sign-up deals are just not right. You're adding an additional layer of work for yourself and possibly limiting so many shops or people in the process. Monster is Tatuaje's brainchild, not CRA's. You made the LE Black toro for CRA and that should be enought for them, for now. You don't want to make such a radical change from year-to-year. Just tweak the formula a bit. It worked out fantastic last year, there's no need to reinvent the wheel with solutions that could cause delays or problems.
3). I think the problems this year were from B&M's treating this as their own personal promo. Forcing customer to buy boxes so they could pre-order Dracs or bundling them up was just rediculous. I'm also against free for alls on opening day. In the end, you're just going to have a bunch of people leave empty-handed and it's the Tatuaje brand that suffers.
4). The spooky tickets was not the best idea. Again, it just encourages shops to break open the boxes to find the tickets for themselves and then either sell the opened boxes, or just break them up in singles. The cigars were going to sell themselves, I don't think having a 1 in 1300 chance to win a Ducati was going to make a difference for the true fans that wanted to buy a box.
I belive a simple thing you can do to avoid so many problems is you need to send a memo to all 100 shops before selection just to give them a criteria as to allocation and ground rules for selling them if they are selected. That way, the unlucky 13 that are picked will be better prepared and will follow your rules.
With this series, the B&M's are being rewarded by your project and being included. But if they in turn reject all of us online people and use it as a way to reward their loyals, then they just ignored a whole online community who are Tatuaje fans. I think you really need to ask yourself what you want for the Tatuaje brand. It's your brand and you have a lot invested to let the B&M's tarnish the reputation for the sake of them rewarding their loyals. I personally think the locals to the individual shops had just as much of a chance to buy as anyone online. The revenue from box sales and online exposure should be enough of a reward to B&M's. I bet if B&M's treated the online people better in this scenario, the people would turn to these same B&M's when they can repay the favor.
