The 50-year-old, Tulsa, Okla.-based convenience store chain already dominates northeastern Oklahoma and has a footprint in eight other states. But Chris Cadieux said the company wants to expand [image-nocss] beyond traditional marketing, said the report.
"Marketing is a major expense, and in today's economy, it's more important than ever to be able to measure that," he told the Tulsa chapter of the American Marketing Association. "We have pressures that we didn't have when I started sweeping floors here in 1972."
Recently, QuikTrip put its name on QuikTrip Park, a $3 million River Parks project that will ensure the brand is visible in another way for years to come.
Cadieux said the company, which opened its 64th store in the Tulsa area this week, will do more promotions such as sponsoring the QuikTrip Center at Expo Square and putting QuikTrip vendors inside places like the BOK Center. "We don't want to just put our name out there," Cadieux told the newspaper. "We'll be looking into more opportunities to pair sponsorship with a store in the venue and getting ourselves into another location."
The company has been pitching its food offerings more heavily lately and recently introduced a line of energy drinks, the report added.
The retailer has even started putting advertisements above store urinals and inside restroom stalls to encourage customers to sign up for a company newsletter. Cadieux said that marketing effort has netted some 150,000 subscribers.
QuikTrip and "CX" have entered into a creative marketing partnership to cross promote one another in a variety of creative ways during the band's appearance on Disturbed's Music As A Weapon tour, commencing March 21, 2009, they announced. The tour is a music, tattoo and lifestyle festival-presented by Samsung Mobile and powered by Sprint. The partnership was negotiated by band co-manager and career strategist, Spencer Proffer of McGhee Proffer Media and QuikTrip's Chris Cadieux and Jim Denny.
QuikTrip has produced a 60-second viral video with Proffer that features CX visiting their venues, integrating elements of the band's new video "Gone." The video includes a description of the promotion to drive fans to QuikTrip to activate the promotion. MPM will syndicate this video across all CX web communities through their multiple media partners across the country. Additionally, CX's mobile partner, g8Wave Mobile, will facilitate a text messaging campaign to also drive fans to QuikTrip in activation of the promotion.
Click herefor Habco Media's blog on Crooked X and QuikTrip.
The aggressive and nontraditional marketing is heralding growth for QuikTrip. Company spokesperson Mike Thornbrugh recently told The Fort Worth Star Telegram that the chain is "going to be expanding like crazy." (Click here for CSP Daily News coverage.)
And The Arizona Daily Star earlier this month reported that QuikTrip is expanding in the Tucson, Ariz., market. The paper speculated that market rival Circle K was building larger stores there because it is "bracing for some hefty competition from...QuikTrip."
"Competitors fear them," Greg Furrier, a principal with Picor Commercial Real Estate Services, told the paper. That's probably because the chain has made a name for itself with 5,000-square-foot shops, 18 to 24 gasoline pumps and high-quality gas and foodservice. The company pays well, offers health benefits, a 401(k) match and even profit sharing and an employee stock option, so customer service tends to be pretty good, too, the report said.
Furrier has been working with QuikTrip to help the chain find space in the Tucson market, the report added. QuikTrip has 63 locations in the Phoenix area.
When convenience competitors get wind that QuikTrip is moving into the area, they sometimes try to beat QuikTrip to the punch by building bigger and better stores themselves, said the report.
"People hear they are going into the market, and they will sometimes go in and try to compete with them with sites, or bulk up with their existing locations," Furrier said.
Thornbrugh told the Star that the company "will start turning ground" on future Tucson sites this summer. He said he was not surprised to hear that Circle K was building bigger and better versions, but he was not giving it much thought. "That's healthy for the marketplace, in our opinion," he said of the new Circle K sites. "Honestly, we are just going to concentrate on what QuikTrip does. We are concentrating on what we can do in our marketplace. We are going to have locations that in our opinion are going to be great. Nice stores. People will feel safe."
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.