My wife filled the car with wine this weekend (the boot, not the tank!). Usual weekend activity? Well, not entirely unusual, but in this instance she was taking advantage of Threshers 40% discount on wine and champagne with only hours to spare.

Now it has finished I can’t help but think this is one great digital and PR campaign.

The digital voucher itself had gone pretty ‘viral’. It was on blogs and inboxes all over the place, but when Threshers put out a press release (this is pure conjecture on my part) saying something along the lines of, ‘Yes, we’ve messed up, but we promise we will stand by the vouchers.’ it got picked up by the media who thought; ‘BA & Hoover all over again!’.

So the millions of people who hadn’t heard about it do, thanks to news services like the BBC, and rush to find a copy and get to Threshers before Christmas thinking they are getting one over a retailer.

I am speculating but if this was all planned it’s an awesome, though incredibly cynical, piece of work. And as it couldn’t be used on the usual 3 for 2 offers I’m sure they drove up profits not just revenues.

While I’m not entirely sure it will have done their brand any good it does seem to be part of a whole trend of retailers running ‘invisible sales’. There are so many vouchers and offers doing the rounds in the run up to Christmas that avoid retailers having to stick huge ‘SALE!’ boards in their windows but have exactly the same effect.

It saves cheapening your product to the high street shoppers but makes sure you drive plenty of business from those who do stumble across your offer. What the Threshers offer demonstrates though is, if you’re going to use digital, people won’t just stumble on your offer, it’ll spread like wildfire!

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