When is a tiger not a tiger?

In the past few weeks a letter sent to Sainsbury’s Customer Service by a 3½ year old little girl has reached people via Twitter, and following that Facebook sharing, liked 150,000 times and shared over 48,000 times. An innocent question indeed, amongst so many that are common: Why is the sky blue? Why can you sometimes see the moon in the day? Why is Tiger bread called Tiger bread? It’s great that this wasn’t immediately dismissed as unimportant or just pushed to the bottom of the pile, but there are some broader themes here. Customer Service matters. Making all your customers feel as if they were your only one is a really great way to encourage loyalty. In this case accentuated by a touching response to the little girl. Only those with hearts of slate would not smile at this exchange. This is made all the more powerful for Sainsbury’s by showing that it cares about all its customers, conveying that a big business has a heart. With news constantly dominated by faceless uncaring behemoths of various types, this provided Sainsbury’s the opportunity to show it’s not like other companies and differentiate itself. Insight can come from anywhere within the organisation. Yes it typically comes from research, reliable base sizes and statistical testing; or from ideation sessions and immersion workshops. But these more formal sources need not be the only path. Just make sure that all parts of the business know how to feed ideas in. The modern equivalent of the suggestion box is now [email protected]. Co-creation can work wonders. What keeps you awake at night about your brand? Or product? Whilst I’m sure that the Tiger bread conundrum wasn’t keeping the little girl up past her bedtime, consumers are a wonderful source of burning issues too – and these may be stifled by the traditional questions. If it matters to the consumer to tell you about it, then there’s a good chance that the issue means a lot to them – particularly if this is outside of a research questionnaire via Customer Service. If they’ve bothered to contact you with a suggestion (and I mean a suggestion that is different to a complaint) then it’s worth thinking about. Make sure there are clear channels to see these, and to have the ability to act on any that are worthwhile. Nimble use of Social Media. The widely shared positive swell of support for how this letter was responded to by Sainsbury’s customer Service was the first step, and then building on this positive PR message further by acting on it has enabled Sainsbury’s to stay in the news. IBMs analysis has noted that the into the majority of tweets carry a negative sentiment - Business Insider. This proves that positives can still rise to the surface. The cost of this PR? A £3 gift card to the little girl. It is also worth noting that the virality was achieved through being picked up by some “Twitter influencers” – as noted on Blog til you drop.

So look out for Giraffe bread in a store near you, like Tiger bread, but with a personal touch from Sainsbury’s.

Jonathan Weeks is a director of Ipsos Marketing and wrote this article for Marketing Magazine.