Food dancing
19 January 2017
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More to come on Sainsbury's of course; and indeed the other retailers post their results and indeed the other mults. What does it all mean etc. However with that in mind, as the dust has settled post Christmas... A notable campaign here.....
Sainsbury's landed their first campaign under their new advertising agency W&K (responsible for ads when Tesco were on their downward slide 3 years or so ago). They didn't do a terrible job there in fairness, but Dave Lewis made the change.
Now I'm no marketing expert and find the mention of words like 'millennial' baffling, I don't think the future is all about wearables either, or the latest tech (remember the Oculus Rift / Google Glass? Tesco app development....?)
However I like to think I can grasp what good looks like in stores, and also keep the customer at the forefront of my mind. After all, I visit stores in plain clothes just like a customer would, at random times of the day and form perceptions of the stores / campaigns / retailers based upon that.
With an (alleged) idea of operational elements and also what everyone else is up to in the market, 364 days a year etc.
Dad, what are you doing up there?
I jest, but here's one example of the latest campaign in store yesterday, all the ends in stores are blanketed with this #fooddancing is 'living well' strapline.
Contrived in itself, playing on the JS strapline of 'Live well for less' of course. But every single end is flagged, even those not featuring food.
So encouragement to 'mosh' (a type of follower of Slipknot and such bands, well they were when I was a lad) over an end of Ariel and Finish dishwasher tablets is just beyond parody.
Some folk appear to think it's a teased campaign, but blanketing c.30 ends in the signage is anything but a tease. The only tease I can see is the point of the campaign, which perhaps will become crystal clear when someone opens the Grocery Insight time capsule in 2080.
It's early days(!) but it is just very, very bizarre...
Quite why the signage went above non food ends is beyond me, twisting in agony if Persil went anywhere near your food I suspect.
Twerk over ends full of Coco Pops, Heinz Sauce and Twinings tea, store executional problem? Unlikely.
These things are planned to the nth degree these days....
With dwell time in stores reducing all the time and the newer Sainsbury's store trials focusing on convenience elements, with food to go encompassing the Bakery and other lines to make the shopping trip easier, why did the agency and/or Sainsbury's think that customers would then spend time wandering the aisles and wondering what all the dancing people in aisle were about?
Not just that; execution is broadly good in Sainsbury's, and to be fair the uniform signage down the centre aisle at least looks good... But only if you ignore the near meaningless messaging.
Folk on Twitter are telling me that perhaps I don't understand it, Spotify insights will be good, it's 'cool' and there's 'more to come.'
Early days it maybe, the above may all be true, but no one has yet pointed to how it translates to money in the till via increased sales.
Sometimes it's forgotten what a simple business food retailing is. David Potts 'we sold more of the things customers wanted to buy' summed it up for Christmas.
It's just that, albeit never as simple and marketing plays a huge role. Sainsbury's have done some excellent work on Little Twists, which was a far better campaign with meaning: 'Why not add Peaches to Pizza?'
Well, why not indeed. Why not just add Pizza to a bowl of Peaches? At least it had resonance with customers.
Also noted some commercial income in aisle; very un Sainsbury's that. Branded messaging.
It wasn't a great Christmas for Sainsbury's overall, very strong on Turkey prices (but where was the advertising about that?) and they didn't enter the Beers/Wines/Spirits promotional wars granted, but a weak, stale campaign using the same stationery as the year before was an error.
More to come on Christmas of course, but the food dancing piece... It may be 'cool', Spotify tie in may be 'smart' and it may well get us all talking.
But it's difficult to see how it'll move to improving the sales line, how that investment in design, media spend, print, labour costs to change the ends etc will pay off for sales?
It is early days granted, but the 'kryptonite' of 'oh we're all talking about it' isn't really relevant here.
We're talking about the 2nd biggest grocer in the UK, not a Shoreditch tech start up with a £100 budget for some guerilla marketing.
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From the Grocery Insight newsletter archive, first sent to subscribers on 19 January 2017. Steve now writes at read.groceryinsight.com. See also the blog archive and briefings.