“Price as a platform can only ever be your tactical weapon – it can never be your strategy” (Neill, 1980)
At the disposal of a retail marketer are a number of tools to help them gain a short-term competitive advantage. Tools include better customer service, better shopping environment, better augmented products, after sales service, pricing and advertising. Two of these tools which are often used simultaneously are pricing and advertising (Lal and Matutes, 1994) also known as price-cut advertising (Neill, 1980). Retailers often advertise via television and radio selected merchandise for a reduced price in hope of attracting more people into their stores and once the consumer is in store, they hope to up-sell and cross-sell to them (Lal and Matutes, 1994). This is a classic trick of the trade and still used today. But is this the best form of retail advertising?
Back in 1980, Neill wisely identified that price is not the only trick a retail marketer has up its sleeve and that they can advertise with. Price warfare produces no winners or profits and inevitably is unsustainable. Neill (1980) reminded us that as marketers, our job is to add value and price is only one type of value. He recommended that marketers should view the consumer’s judgement of overall value more holistically. For example, location, range of goods, quality, layout and the whole shopping experience, etc. Neill predicted that those were the values that future retail advertisers will focus. How right he was.
WoolworthsThe Fresh Food People
Agency: Leo Burnett Connaghan & May
In the 1980’s Woolworths Supermarkets was in a lot trouble. They lacked strategic direction, was not making profit and had no competitive differentiation (Joffe, 1996). Like Neill (1980) suspected and discussed, Woolworths were exactly the type of business he was exemplifying in his article. Their advertising reflected this lack of strategy and added little value other than the promoting the expected weekly specials, just like everyone else in the 1980’s. Through a partnership with Leo Burnett Connaghan & May, they avoided extinction and achieved one of the greatest success stories of the 1990’s (Joffe, 1996). The strategy was Woolworths, The Fresh Food People.
The TVC was launched in 1994 with the added slogan; you can’t get fresher than that (Joffe, 1996). It had the same jingle as the previous TVCs but it was slightly altered to accommodate the extra slogan. This was a good strategy by Woolworths because consistency is the key to an integrated marketing communication campaign. The target audience already associates Woolworths with the Fresh Food People slogan and jingle, so as soon as the ad starts and the music plays, they know it is a Woolworths’ ad.
To really drum in the message that Woolworths in the freshest, they chose to show as many shots of fresh food as possible. The meat is nicely cut and the vegetables and fruit are almost impossibly pleasantly stacked. Added with spoken voice of “delivered fresh every day, that’s the only way”, Woolworths is really trying to scream out to the audience that they are the freshest in the business.
The TVC is executed with a light-hearted tone. Everyone is smiling, the staff appears friendly and the customers appear to be enjoying themselves. Woolworths is appealing to the target market’s sense of enjoyment. Not only is Woolworths attempting to sell that they are the freshest, but also the most fun place to shop. The tone is also attempt to show that Woolworths’ freshness is real and not a myth. All the presenters are not particularly glamorous. They are what one would expect a butcher, baker and produce person to look like and thus emphasising the realness message.
The Woolworths Fresh Food People campaign is classic example of Neill’s prediction back in 1980. It clearly demonstrates that price is not the only driving factor of the consumer. Other value adding elements such as quality can also be advertised successfully to bring in sales and increase profits.
Flea Market Montgomery
Sammy Stephens
A local business owner decided you did not need to spend extravagant amounts of money to hire an ad agency to help you put together a TVC. Why not just do it yourself and save all that cash?! That is exactly what the local business owners of the Flea Market Montgomery did. This is not unusual, with many local business owners and politicians doing the same. However, it is Flea Market Montgomery’s peculiar approach which has gained him world-wide attention.
Flea Market Montgomery’s self-made TVC has been nominated as one of the worst commercials ever seen on television (The Gruen Transfer, 2010). An unknown rapper, Sammy Stephens, was hired to rap a very simple message, “it’s just like a…mini mall”. The ad is extremely repetitive and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry after viewing it.
On face value the objective of the TVC was to convey a very simple message of convenience and familiarity. Perhaps the managers of the Flea Market had identified that consumers were not shopping there because they were unfamiliar with the format of the market and this unfamiliarity has deterred them away. This TVC hopes to overcome this by repeating over and over and over again that it’s just like a mini mall! It does this through song so it makes it catchy and memorable. A technique tried and test, take Woolworths for example. However is this only objective?
The TVC is no doubt catchy due to the tune. It is also eye-popping due to the poor quality. The presenter is dressed unfashionable, has a 1980s style haircut and is not particularly hansom. The shots used were not elegant and the camera quality is not great either. But nonetheless, it grabs your attention. It is so bad, that you can’t look away. Was the objective to make it so bad that people will be astonished and blown away by how bad it is? Was the objective to make it this bad that it is good?
When this TVC was conceived, I wonder did management ever dream that it would receive this much attention and coverage? Did they deliberately make the ad just as it is to create this hype and talk? Was Sammy Stephens chosen on purpose to execute this ad? The long version of the ad has over 6.5 million views on YouTube! The presenter Sammy Stephens appeared on Ellen DeGeneres show and the TVC has been re-played by many television shows around the world. This is either marketing genius or pot luck.
