Recently, a StubGroup staff member experienced some great company marketing. The following story took place courtesy of our friends at Target Stores…
On a late evening, a StubGroup staff member made their way to a local Target Store to purchase two chairs for the StubGroup offices. The store manager, Barron, was extremely helpful to the Stubgroup staff member and went out of his way to accommodate the staffer with the purchase of the chairs.
After the chairs were purchased, the StubGroup staff member (an apparently poor judge of what will fit into certain spaces), realized that the chairs would not fit into their vehicle. This posed a problem—it was close to 10:30PM, money was just spent on two rather large chairs, and there was no means of transporting them. The purchaser of the chairs, their vehicle, and the store manager, Barron stood in an empty Target parking lot.
This is where the best kind of marketing kicks in, Barron, the helpful store manager, says “how far away do you live?”, the Stubgroup staff member replies “about 10 minutes from here”, Barron then replies “I get off work in about 20 minutes, I will load the chairs in the back of my truck and deliver them to you.”
Sure enough, around 11PM, Barron arrives with the delivery, unloads the chairs himself, refuses help, and then refuses to accept any kind of tip compensation. Later the Stubgroup staff learned that this was in the opposite direction of Barron’s drive home from work.
Barron sacrificed his own time, drove in the opposite direction of home to delivery some merchandise purchased from his place of work, to people he didn’t know, for zero benefit to himself. This is what we at StubGroup call fantastic marketing!
There was no short term upside for Target, but this story got us talking to everyone we know about Barron and the company that employs him. Kudos to Target for hiring such a customer minded employee, and kudos to Barron for being a man of integrity by putting the customer first.