Article
Church's Chicken benefits from goodwill from $20,000 giveaway
The chain's Random Acts of Goodness campaign gave customers a total of $20,000 over four months.
August 13, 2009
Church's Chicken today wrapped up its Random Acts of Goodness campaign in Atlanta, home of the chain's headquarters.
Church's president and CEO Harsha V. Agadi brought the goodwill campaign full circle by personally presenting $1,000 to a young mother. Thecampaign kicked offin May San Antonio, Texas, with Agadi giving the first $1,000 to a randomly selected Church's customer, a local fifth grade teacher.
Agadi also announced that the chain will donate one meal for every Church's location worldwide to the students, teachers and parents of Kipp Atlanta Metro Schools up to 2,000 meals. Church's has about 1,680 locations worldwide. Agadi presented a mock check to Kipp Metro Atlanta Schools with the retail value of the in-kind donation up to $10,000.
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Church's CEO Harsha Agadi gives away $1,000 to the campaign's first recipient, Paula Salas, in San Antonio, Texas. |
As part of the campaign, Church's executives visited 20 of the chain's restaurants in 10 cities, with Agadi also visiting stores in Dallas and Houston. The chain gave away a total of $20,000 in gifts of $1,000 cash to randomly selected customers in each store. Recipients also have included students, nurses and retirees.
The campaign was intended as a way to show customer appreciation and instill goodwill among its core customers. And executives feel they achieved that goal.
"The beauty of this campaign was really seeing that we've actually touched people's lives," said Jennie Hong, director of marketing services and communications for Church's. "Just having people there and hearing the stories behind the hardships that they were going through and how this $1,000 would help the cash recipients was just remarkable."
Agadi so enjoyed giving away the money at the first store that he expanded his involvement in the campaign into Dallas and Houston, the chain's two largest markets, Hong said. He also gave away the last cash gift in Atlanta today.
Hong said the campaign was not designed as a marketing campaign but simply as a way to give back to its customers.
"This campaign was really about giving back to the community," she said. "We just felt that as other brands were giving away deep discounted coupons and free meal coupons, we figured that given the tough economic times that we're facing, we just wanted to make sure we did something that could impact our customers' lives and make a difference."
Customer response
Hong attended some of the cash giveaways and said the recipients often were overwhelmed, sometimes with the customer and the executive in tears. Some knew about the campaign and waited at the store during the announced time frame hoping they might win. Others, including a regular customer inHouston
Recipients were chosen at random, based on the executive's criteria. Different executives visited the 10 markets, including the company's chief people officer, chief operating officer and chief franchise officer. Sometimes the executive selected the third person in line, while Agadi even walked around the dining room to pick a recipient.
Hong said some of the recipients happened to be going through financial hardships, making their receiving the giveaway particularly heartwarming. "We felt they were just meant to be there because it really would help them to pay bills."
Many of the 20 stores were the giveaways were held, especially those in larger markets, saw packed stores as customers anticipated the event. Some of the stores, particularly those in theDallas
"We've had incredible results in some of the stores in certain markets," she said.
The company has yet to determine if traffic or sales increased in the time following the giveaway.
Way to give back
When Agadi first announced the campaign in late April, he said it was intended to celebrate the chain's six consecutive years of global sales growth.
Church's announced inDec 2008 that it had achieved its fifth year of positive same-store domestic sales, although the company did not release sales figures. Held by private equity firm Friedman Fleischer & Lowe LLC, which recently completed the purchase of the company from Bahrain-based international investment firm Arcapita Bank B.S.C., the company is not required to disclose earnings figures.
In January, Church's announced anticipated positive results for the year, due to its value positioning, including a new 99-cent value menu offering,and marketing efforts. For the month, Church's domestic customer transactions were up 6.3 percent, and sales growth momentum had been maintained at 2.6 percent year to date.
Twitter boost
Church's implemented part of its social media strategy with the launch of the Random Acts of Goodness campaign, using Twitter to share clues of the stores the company would visit next.
Hong said the company's Twitter site, @ChurchsChicken, helped increase the general awareness of the campaign and make the tour stop searchable online. The campaign also helped build the company's Twitter presence, enabling it to achieve more than 2,400 followers in just a few months.
The company also used Twitter to tweet its social media news releases and connect with media in that space.
"Because Twitter's a new work-of-mouth marketing, we felt if was a great vehicle to use to help expand the awareness of the campaign," Hong said.
Franchisees carry it forward
Church's franchisees also were excited the campaign, and two of them have decided to carry the goodwill forward into their own markets with their own efforts. A franchisee inEl Paso ,Texas
Indianola,Miss.-based Church's franchisee Double Quick is its own version of the campaign. To celebrate the franchisee's 25th anniversary, the franchisee is holding a Random Acts of Giving effort. Having kicked off Aug. 3, the campaign will give away $250 to a random customer over 25 days.
The franchisee operates 12 Church's Chicken units and 44 convenience stores in the northwestMississippi and southeastArkansas
Double Quick president Tom Gresham said he wanted to have his own campaign because he liked the idea.
"We thought it was fun, something different," he said."(It also was) a good way to create a little buzz and do something different. I hadn't see anybody else do something like it."
Like the Church's chain,Gresham
The local TV station has covered the campaign, including interviewing Gresham and some of the recipients.Gresham
"We've noticed some increase in traffice, more buzz around some of stores," he said.
But the goodwill generated is even more important – and harder to quantify.
"It makes people feel good about Double Quick and feel good about Church's Chicken," he said. "Sometimes that kind of stuff's hard to measure. It makes people feel good about us. And that's important."
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