Sainsbury's rebrands Tiger bread after request from 3 year old
UK supermarket Sainsbury's has rebranded its Tiger bread to Giraffe bread after receiving a letter from 3 and a half year old Lily Robinson.
Lily wrote a letter to the UK supermarket asking why Tiger bread is not called Giraffe bread. Look at the photo and Lily's letter to see why she thought that it needed to be renamed.
Customer Service Manager Chris King (aged 27 and 1/3) responded to her letter saying that it was a 'brilliant idea'. He explained why the bread was originally named Tiger bread, and he enclosed a £3 Sainsbury's gift voucher for her to spend.
The Facebook photo with Lily's original letter and Sainsbury's response has been liked on Facebook over 153,000 times. Searches for Tiger bread have jumped massively in Google trends and Chris King has been branded a customer service legend on a Facebook Fan page.
Tiger bread gets its mottled appearance from painting the surface of the loaf with rice paste before baking. It tastes crunchy -- with a slightly different taste to ordinary white bloomers and it makes really nice soft sandwiches.
In response to the request, today, Sainsbury's announced that they would be renaming Tiger bread to Giraffe bread and have credited Lily with the original idea.
Lily's parents, who are not making any money from the rebrand, are handling the media explosion in an ethical way, asking that donations be sent to charity.
The really nice thing about this story is that Sainsbury's has acted wonderfully. It saw a great idea from a young girl and decided to implement it -- without any grand fanfare -- just a quiet press release giving full credit to Lily.
Listening to the customer
There are so many examples of people using social media to complain about poor customer service that it's great to read about brands that value their relationship with the customer. Sainsbury's has listened and changed one of its brands because it seemed right. Not because it would bring in any extra revenue, or in response to sustained lobbying by fans to make things better.One person had an idea, another person thought it was a brilliant idea and a product line now has a new name.
Wouldn't it be nice if more social brands could be this flexible with their customers?
Sainsbury's, I'll be delighted to eat your Giraffe bread. Thank you for caring about the voice of the customer -- no matter how old they happen to be.