Best Buy Ad, Specialty Dealer Promotions Mark Super Bowl Week in TV Retailing

Best Buy is using the Super Bowl stage to launch a Buy Back program it announced in an e-mail blast to “valued customers” Thursday. The ad, featuring Justin Bieber and Ozzy and Sharon Osbourne, is scheduled to air during the third quarter of the game between the Green Bay Packers and Pittsburgh Steelers. In a letter to customers Thursday, Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn said the program is “future-proofing your technology.” Under the program, consumers buy the technology they want today and Best Buy will buy it back at a set price when consumers are ready to upgrade. “You'll know upfront what your gear will be worth,” he said, and consumers can redeem the Buy Back dollars at stores and “immediately receive a Best Buy gift card."

Categories included in the program are laptop, netbook and tablet PCs, TVs and mobile phones, according to the Best Buy website, which provides a redemption schedule for products. TVs $5,000 and higher are ineligible, it said. Approximate redemption values are 50 percent for a product less than six months old, 40 percent for those six to 12 months, 30 percent for 12-18 months, 20 percent for 18-24 months and 10 percent for 24-48 months, the company said.

Best Buy did not respond by our deadline to questions about the cost of the plan to consumers, the effective date, the disposition of traded-in products and any plans to expand the program beyond the five categories.

Meanwhile, Best Buy’s website listed 28 Samsung products, including several Blu-ray players, for sale under a Super Bowl ad. Offers include $1,300 off on a Samsung 55-inch UN55C7000WF TV, cutting the price to $1,999, and $130 off on a 42-inch TV, reducing it to $469.

As big-box stores use the lure of the game for their annual big-screen TV sales this week, a few specialty dealers are devising creative ways to feed off Super Bowl fever, too. The Sound Room in St. Louis is offering those who buy a TV from its store Jan. 13-Feb. 5 a chance to get their money back or receive prizes depending on what happens in the game. If the first or second half kickoff is returned for a touchdown, everyone who bought a TV from The Sound Room between the dates will receive a refund, President David Young told Consumer Electronics Daily. “I hope it happens,” he said. “It would make huge news. We might get national coverage if it does."

Young said he bought a $50,000 insurance policy to back up the contest. “The insurance company figures out the odds and insures you for a dollar amount,” he said. Based on experience, Young is expecting a Super Bowl bump of 25 additional big-screen TV sales, but he’s expecting more from publicity about the promotion. He'll run a sales report Saturday to see whether the $50,000 policy will cover costs. If it doesn’t, he'll raise the coverage amount, he said.

The contest is “something different to talk about with customers other than price, price price,” Young said. It has also energized the sales staff, he said, which is competing “to see who can sell the most TVs.” Young is pleased with results, noting, “We're moving some old inventory and some new inventory.” After Christmas, inventories “weren’t super high,” he said, but the current sales period is “complicated” because it’s when manufacturers begin turning over lines. “We have to move the current product because the new stuff will start to ship in 30-60 days and we need to empty the warehouse,” he said.

The Sound Room advertised the Super Bowl promo on a local radio station, which ended up doing a live feed from the store Saturday covering a different promotion, in which a customer won a TV in a drawing. Customers at the store got a try at selecting a keychain remote from a bowl to see whether it would power on a Sharp 40-inch TV. The first customer to get a match won the TV. Sharp is underwriting the Super Bowl promotion, Young said, which also offers $500 prizes to customers who bought TVs during the time specified if touchdowns or field goals are scored under specified conditions.

At Gramophone, a specialty audio video company with stores in Timonium and Columbia, Md., marketing director Kate Hudkins is using social media to push Super Bowl promotions and show prospective customers that the dealer is “cool, fun and younger than we might look.” Creating that impression and supporting it through Facebook and Twitter will pay off down the road, she said. Gramophone held a contest that began several months ago and ended last weekend, in which a customer won a Super Bowl VIP party supplied by Gramophone. The contest was based on user-generated videos, a voting system and points that contestants gained for visits to the store and website. The $6,000 package, to be installed Friday in time for the game, includes an Epson projector, 100-inch screen, surround-sound system, subwoofer, and remote control. The DVD part of the system can be upgraded to Blu-ray for a fee.

Gramophone advertised the promotion on three radio stations, Hudkins said, along with a “no sales tax” deal on TVs bought Jan. 28 to Feb. 5. Customers who buy TVs then save Maryland’s 6 percent sales tax, which the dealership will pick up, she said.

The final piece of Gramophone’s Super Bowl push is a 30-45-second house video, billed as the retailer’s Super Bowl ad, which customers can get to on YouTube from a URL in an e-mail blast, Hudkins said. “It’s meant to be humorous,” she said, but in the ad the company will push its TVs and headphones to make the most of the eyeballs. The Baltimore Sun’s media critic is expected to review the ad in the weekend newspaper, and that will produce publicity beyond the company’s standard mailing list, Hudkins said.

At Marvin Electronics in Fort Worth, Texas, President Stuart Schuster was hoping to benefit from a Mitsubishi ad that ran in a newspaper insert last weekend. Consumers can save $1,100 from the price of a 3D-ready 82-inch DLP TV and $700 off the list price of a 46-inch LED LCD TV, he said. “Mitsubishi came to the table on the deal,” he said, “and we've had phone calls about it,” he said. But unusual winter weather in Texas this week had curbed store traffic when we spoke to him Tuesday. “We hope people come in to get a demo,” he said.