You've Got the Power

You've Got the Power was the third in a series of Lowe's employee initiatives designed to build credit card application growth and promote customer loyalty. The promotion successfully combined the power of merchandise incentives and cash to motivate a diverse workforce. Lowe's, one of the largest home improvement retailers in the U.S., has more than 70,000 retail store employees among their 700+ stores across the country. The majority of employees that work with retail customers are men and women in their teens and early twenties. The Lowe's staff that primarily deals with contractors are male, often retired seniors, who spent a lifetime in the construction, plumbing, and other building trades. The incentives chosen to motivate this work force had to cater to a large and diverse audience. Reinforcing Lowe's overall campaign theme, "The Power of Pride," You've Got the Power was created to motivate store employees to ask customers to sign up for Lowe's Credit Cards. The credit card is provided and managed by GE Capital. In-store posters, colorful signage, and flyers distributed to every employee announced the program. Quarterly newsletters distributed to each employee kept interest in the campaign high. In addition, there were a series of "fast faxes" sent to Lowe's store managers to encourage support of the credit card effort in a proactive manner. The initial incentive used was cash, which appealed to the entire targeted audience. Employees were awarded two dollars for every completed Lowe's credit card application. After stores met their pre-determined goals in terms of numbers of applications completed, the cash bonus jumped to three dollars in the next quarter. Virtually every store employee participated in the program, earning the cash awards. Merchandise incentives were also awarded to the top performing Lowe's store in each ofo the chain's twelve regions at the end of each quarter. These stores received a package with more than thirty incentives that included items such as 36" super flat TVs, 16-piece golf sets, and Bose Wave Radios. The incentives were awarded in random drawings that were held at catered "Power Lunches" at the top-performing stores. The entire store staff was invited to the luncheon and had the opportunity to win. In addition to the top performing stores in each region, a "Wild Card" store was chosen from among the stores that reached or exceeded their pre-set goals to receive the same merchandise assortment for the in-store random drawings. This kept all the stores in the game, no matter where they ranked in relation to their competitors. At the end of the program, a Grand Prize "Power Lunch" was held for the stores in each region that achieved the highest total of applications over goals. A special assortment of awards was given out at an off-site banquet facility. Many of the prizes involved power accessories and electronics reinforcing the program theme: You've Got the Power.