Mar 25, 2013

Do You Have an Ace Up Your Sleeve? By Tim Hodson

Last week, I read an article about how Ace Hardware is introducing a new marketing campaign called, “Meet the Aces.”

The retailer-owned hardware cooperative wants its customers to know whenever they have questions or dilemmas in their homes, they can turn to store personnel to help them with personal solutions. Solutions that seem a little more friendly and relaxed. The company believes that this is just one more way that these stores can differentiate themselves from its mega-store competitors.

It’s sort of a return to the “Ace is the place with the helpful hardware man!” campaign of years past.

Jeff Gooding, Ace’s director of consumer marketing, told Marketing Daily that the new campaign “continues to build on our difference in the market “¦ we own the idea of being more helpful than the other[s].” Gooding said Ace customers get “a more personal kind of help” which benefits both the company and its customers.

Doesn’t this sound like common sense to you? Do you have an ace up your sleeve? Is your company the place with the helpful horticulture person? When your customers have a problem/challenge is there someone in your organization who can help them find the right solution? And find it in a way that puts their minds at ease?

Drop me a line at thodson@sgcmail. com and let me know what innovative ways you have come up with to help your customers.

– Tim