An Italian supermarket chain has launched a new combined marketing and HR campaign: They give away 10 jobs to people who posses the lucky numbers. These numbers are obtained by every customer that buys for 30 EUR in one of the chain’s stores.

The winners get a job for one year and can be prolonged if they do a great job.

You can argue on the marketing effectiveness of this campaign. I have to admit, the free media space is huge, but which HR manager has signed off on this?

To your current employees, you say something like “Well, you are as important as any randomly selected guy (m/v)”.

To your future employees, you say something like: “Why trouble, getting a job is just a lottery”.

To your customers this may sound like: “Dear customer, the people that will help you may or not be qualified to satisfy your needs… you just have to be lucky”.

To the shareholders, the message is clear: “Who runs this place and why did I put money in it?”.

Sometimes what started as probably a great idea in a brainstorm session is a lousy when you do it…

Original article (Dutch): Deredactie.Be
Supermarket Tigros.