Is Little Kitchen next? Sneak peek at 2019 as Coles wraps up Little Shop with $10,000 giveaway
COLES has wrapped up its successful Little Shop with a $10,000 giveaway — but we may already have a sneak peek at next year’s version.
A TASMANIAN mum who “shrunk” her son down into a Coles Little Shop for an Instagram competition has described the $10,000 prize as “absolutely life changing”.
Amy Prior, 38, has been announced as the winner of the Ultimate Little Shopper competition, which invited people to upload a photo or video and explain in 25 words or less why they should win a year’s worth of groceries.
The full-time mum from Sheffield said she found out about the competition only two days before it closed and “just dropped absolutely everything” to work on her video entry, which featured her three-year-old son taking a tour of a Little Shop collector case.
“My goodness, it’s absolutely life-changing for our family,” she said. “To have that part of your budget taken care of, it’s just a massive relief. It’s going to make day-to-day living a lot easier.”
Ms Prior said she came up with the idea and created the props with cardboard and glitter while her husband used a basic editing program to put the video together. “The overall quality was a little bit rushed,” she said.
Five runners-up will each get a $500 voucher:
The announcement came amid growing unrest among the Little Shop Instagram community, with many demanding answers more than a week after Coles initially said the winner would be revealed.
More than 1100 Instagram posts featured the competition hashtag “#ultimatelittleshopper”. “When is ultimate shopper announced!?” one Instagram user wrote. “So many people would like to know this,” another said. “There was no announcement anywhere.”
Responses from Coles customer service representatives — describing the competition as “terminated” when they should have said “closed”, and saying the winner had been “announced” when they should have said “chosen” — contributed to the confusion.
“Thanks for reaching out,” the Coles Instagram account wrote in response to one query on Sunday. “Just letting you know our winner had already been announced. We’re sorry for any disappointment.”
In response to another customer query, the Coles Facebook page said in a private message that it had “unfortunately received confirmation that the competition was terminated after the first week”.
“We appreciate that this has been particularly disappointing for a large number of customers and for that we apologise,” Coles wrote. “We’ll pass your feedback on to our Marketing Team so that they’re aware.”
The announcement came as a New Zealand supermarket revealed what could be the next version of the successful promotion when it returns in 2019. The Little Shop giveaway has now ended, but Little Kitchen could be next.
New World Supermarkets, which also ran the Little Shop promotion in 2013 via marketing agency Unga, has unveiled its new line featuring mini products including Kleenex tissues, Leggo’s pasta sauce and even a Woman’s Day magazine.
The successful Little Shop promotion, which awards customers a random mini for every $30 they spend, severely dented Woolworths’ bottom line and has been credited with boosting sales of participating brands including White King and Messy Monkeys by up to 50 per cent.
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