Oddbins woos Naked staff with love letters

Oddbins has allegedly been sending love letters and bottles of wine to key staff at rival merchant Naked Wines in a bid to poach them.

As reported by The Guardian, the pink letters, believed to be sent by Oddbins to Naked Wines marketing and e-commerce staff proclaim: “We’ve been following your career and decided we need you. We must unite and work as one!”

It goes on: “Shall I compare your skills to the rest of the industry? Yours are more lovely and more fabulous!”

The stunt by Oddbins is an attempt to fight back against the might of Naked Wines, which was bought by Majestic in April for £70m. At the same time the company’s founder, Rowan Gormley was made chief executive of Majestic.

Naked Wines boasts over 25,000 Twitter followers and 37,000 likes on Facebook, while Oddbins lags behind with just 2,919 Twitter followers.

a screen grab from the Love Your Work! website by Profiles Creative, who are behind the campaign

Oddbins managing director Ayo Akintola refused to reveal to The Guardian whether or not his company was behind the stunt, telling the paper:

“I will not comment on rumours, however I can say that our ambition is to make Oddbins the best independent drinks retailer in the UK and to achieve this we have a strategy to hire the best in class people across all areas of the business.”

Lewis Cole, a project manager at Naked Wines, posted a photo of a bottle of wine believed to be sent by Obbdins on Instagram with a message that read: “Your skills are renowned throughout the kingdom, Be our prince!”

It is thought that recruitment firm Profiles Creative is behind the “Love Your Work” campaign, which recently appeared on twitter as @LoveYourWorkUK.

Eamon FitzGerald, Naked Wines managing director UK, told The Guardian he didn’t feel threatened by the move.

“It’s quite flattering that others are interested in Naked’s talented staff. If I was running a rival company I’d want them too,” he said.