Rainbow Foods, the 2nd largest grocery store chain in the Twin Cites with 42 locations
In Spring 1999, a couple weeks before school was out, Mark Boldt’s daughter Savannah handed out to each of her classmates, a Rubba T-shirt, Rubba Music CD along with Rubba tattoos and stickers. A few days later, one of Savannah’s classmate’s parents approached Mark and first, thanked him for all the fun Rubba Ducks gifts he and Savannah had given out to the class.
He then asked Mark if he had seen the news that morning, specifically the report about Rainbow Foods and Cub Foods. Apparently, the day prior, the complete executive team at Rainbow Foods left the company unexpectedly and went over to operate Cub Foods stores – their competitor. He stated he was the only person that remained in the Rainbow Foods executive office.
He continued to share with Mark, on how now all the Rainbow’s executive responsibilities lay upon him, including finding a Back to School program/theme for the up-coming Fall school year – less then 4 months away. He mentioned how he already committed to a $250K advertisement campaign – tv, radio and newspaper – for this Back to School program that he didn’t have a theme for yet. Mark asked, how can I help?
He asked Mark if he was able to get some of the actual Rubba Ducks made before August, and if so, he would love to dedicate the complete Back to School program to Rubba Ducks. To assure its success, he promised Rubba Ducks would receive the most valuable real estate in each of the 42 stores – the first 12 feet of shelf space at the entrance of all the stores. Mark was thrilled!
Ultimately, Rainbow Foods committed to purchasing over a million dollars of Rubba Ducks merchandise; i.e., 5 different Rubba Duck styles, t-shirts, embroidered hats, music CDs, tattoos, stickers, bag tags and even a special issue of Mark’s national children’s magazine Surprises – where Rubba Ducks was first introduced.
Once the program was underway, Rainbow Foods was so happy with the success of the Rubba Ducks themed Back to School program, when it came time to prepare for a grand opening of two new stores in late September – Rainbow Foods paid to have a custom Rubba Ducks Laser show created and synced to the Rubba Ducks theme song that was then displayed on a huge screen outside both of the two new stores on their opening days.
Mark still admits today on how overwhelmed the Rubba Ducks team was with ALL the exposure Rubba Ducks had received from the Rainbow Foods advertisement campaign; i.e., two months of the weekly full back page newspaper ads in the Star Tribune and St.Paul Pioneer Press. Not to mention, over a million custom Rubba Ducks paper bags Rainbow Foods used during the 60 day promotion – to add more value, these bags offered instructions on how to use them as a book wrap covers.
Although, one of the most interesting highlights that stands-out most to Mark, a couple days following the launch of the Back to School campaign, the Rubba Ducks office was inundated with phone calls from every major soda company and snack company, inquiring on what Rubba Ducks was all about, considering Rubba Ducks occupied the most desired 12 feet of prime real-estate in each of the 42 Rainbow Foods stores.
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