hi jake... do you think i will date myself too much if i say i remember green stamps? <gg>
sape takes green stamps dot com...
Wednesday October 20 1:57 AM ET
Nettrends: S & H Green Stamps Go Digital
By Dick Satran
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Spam found new life on the Internet. So why not S & H Green Stamps?
A marketing powerhouse from the past, Sperry & Hutchinson Green Stamps were relaunched Wednesday as an Internet-based service, with members of the 103-year-old company's founding family among its backers.
But there won't be any stamp-licking this time around.
''Convenience and technology are driving this business now,'' said S & H President Rod Parker in an interview. ''It used to be really tactile, in the Ozzie and Harriet world, when you'd lick and stick and fill the books up for your prize.''
Instead, the entire process will be electronically tallied at the points of sale and immediately sent to the customers own account at the S & H Internet site (http://www.greenpoints.com).
The company will begin offering ''S & H Greenpoints'' for purchases at retail stores, at other Web sites and by using a special S & H bank card that gives points every time it's used for a purchase.
To succeed, S & H needs to attract millions of users to elect to use its ''digital stamps'' and actively participate in the program.
That's the opposite of ''spam,'' another 1950s icon that lent its name to the Internet, becoming the favored term coined for unwanted junk e-mail. Spam is a canned ham that gained popularity during World War II and got new life in a Monty Python skit: ''Spam spam spam spam spam,'' providing the allusion to mass e-mailings.
S & H's digital relaunch comes at a time when scores of ''dot-com'' companies are offering things ''absolutely free'' over the Internet to get people to come to their Web sites.
It also follows a spate of ''free PC'' offers in which consumers get free computers for signing up for Internet services, as well as offers of free Internet access for those who use marketing programs.
Parker, though, thinks S & H can break out of the pack because he is starting with a brand name that's already legendary.
''The brand name is worth hundreds of millions of dollars,'' said Parker, a veteran of online music business CDNOW. ''There is a strong residual brand name here, with recognition of greater than 50 percent (of the U.S. public.)''
Founded in the 1896, it was the largest single purchaser of consumer goods in the world, and it printed three times as many stamps as the post office. Shifts in consumer marketing hurt Green Stamps later and S & H became part of Baldwin United, a conglomerate that went into bankruptcy.
Walter Beinecke, a member of the founding family, assembled a group that reacquired rights to the company with an idea to update it for the digital world and believing that the ''Green Stamps'' was a marketing idea that had come full circle.
The company recruited e-commerce Sapient Corp (Nasdaq:SAPE - news). as its main outside technology provider and added a number of experienced e-commerce veterans, including Parker, to its management team.
They decided that S & H needed a new concept from anything else out on the Internet, as well as a departure from its own past business model. The switch to ''green points'' from ''green stamps'' underscores that difference.
They also make no effort to get into the campy ''retro'' advertising style popular with the ''Webhead'' crowd because of the broad-based pitch it needs to make to consumers. Instead they've built a site with a decidedly mainstream look.
''We want to resist being labeled as either an online or an offline company,'' said Parker. ''The online world is growing very quickly but it's a long ways from providing the volume we need.''
Hence, its three-pronged marketing approach using charge cards, grocery stores and onlines: ''We are looking for smart savvy merchants and retailers who get the idea of this digital currency.''
The uphill fight then becomes getting users to adopt the currency, and also enlisting major retailers they need S & H logo over their products. In its heyday, S & H appealed to ''the No. 3 in the market that wanted to offer consumers a way to catch up.'' But Parker said it remains to be seen who will use the new system.
''We have a gigantic icon in S & H,'' Parker added. ''There are no negatives here. It's been a part of our culture for more than a century but going forward we want to build a very modern digital product that works for tomorrow's consumer. This is not just a piece of nostalgia we're marketing.''
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