Saks, Lucky Join P&G, Wal-Mart in Recession-Themed Coupon Promos

(MoneyWatch)  Every campaign needs a coupon -- that's the takeaway from the current holiday season's marketing blitz. Even upscale brands like Lucky Brands and Saks Fifth Avenue are joining Procter & Gamble and Wal-Mart with coupon discount schemes. Procter & Gamble seems to have come up with the most original angle on the phenom: It opened a pop-up store in Midtown New York where consumers can get their hair washed, make-up applied ... and walk out with a coupon book worth $45 for P&G items.Significance? The store is one block from the Fifth Avenue designer store district, the ritziest strip of stores in the world.

The store -- which will close after Dec. 11 -- came after tryouts in malls in Rochester, N.Y., and Dallas over the summer.

P&G seems to have developed a thing for novelty real estate gestures. It also opened Charmin restrooms in Times Square:

A two-level respite from the bustle of the nation's largest city that features 20 bathroom stalls cleaned by attendants after every use, a family photo area featuring a Santa sleigh and a tree house with Charmin-branded features. On the second level, families can recharge their electronic devices and play with a Nintendo Wii or Mattel toys. P&G says about 1 million have experienced the Times Square restrooms during the holidays since it started the promotion several years ago.

Brick-and-mortar stores with coupon handouts are somewhat counterintuitive because the coupon business is actually moving online (along with everything else). Even Saks Fifth Avenue has a spam program.

Most online coupon programs aren't that glam. They're more like this one, from Pennsylvania's Clipper Magazine. Clients like email and online coupons for obvious reasons:

They're cheaper and quicker than print inserts or direct mail for reaching millions of shoppers. E-mail messages' average cost is about $7 per consumer response, vs. $48 per response for traditional direct mail. And retailers can craft and send a promotion in about half the time it would take to print and distribute traditional messages.

The logical final resting place for coupons is mobile phones (after all, how many times have you been shopping and forgotten to bring the coupon? No one ever forgets their phone):

Coupons delivered and redeemed via mobile phones are forecast to be used by some 200 million mobile subscribers globally by 2013, according to a new study by Juniper Research.

Other brands utilizing coupons this year include Lucky Brands and All You by Wal-Mart. Obligatory ad agency soundbite:

"Thrift is the new normal," said Lance Saunders, executive vice president and head of account planning at Campbell Mithun in Minneapolis, an agency owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies.

Image by Flickr user ninjapoodles, CC