• The Wall Street Journal (subscription required), Wednesday, March 7, 2007 11:45 AM

Wal-Mart's VPI program--which in Wal-Mart speak means Value Producing Item--encourages each of its 1.8 million employees to choose a product as his or her pet project for the year. The designation ensures that a product will get special treatment at the world's largest retailer.

Store employees, who sometimes adopt their bosses' VPIs as their own, give their pet products the spotlight and dream up offbeat marketing gimmicks to promote them. Store workers who push their chosen VPI to top-seller status can reap cash prizes of up to $500 and trips to Wal-Mart's raucous annual meeting in Arkansas.

A lot of the marketing goes on behind the scenes. At company conferences several times each year and internal company broadcasts each Saturday, high-ranking executives push their VPIs to lower-level employees who control display space at stores.

Unilever estimates that Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott's designation of its environmentally friendly All Small & Mighty laundry detergent as his personal VPI was responsible for 15% to 20% of the $100 million in U.S. sales it racked up in its first full year on the market.

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