27 October 2013
Before you start, you'd never know what is actually going to work when you design a marketing campaign.
Some, with millions spent on what seemed like a good idea at the time, have been enormous failures, while a simple, cheap idea may reap whirlwind benefits.
One excellent example is the Chinese chap who promotes his "Spray and walk away!" He has become so well known that he now appears in print ads, which is an amazing crossover for an unknown face. It took Briscoes many years of high-saturation TV advertising before they were able to associate their brand with just a portrait picture of their ad woman.
Finishing just this week has been what I consider to be New Zealand's most successful marketing campaign ever - New World and the Little Shop range.
As New World shoppers, we've been delighting our little bloke with the constant stream of Little Shop toys, and it was obvious from the response on TradeMe of free items consistently selling for $3-4 each. Not bad if you spend $200 on groceries and can recover $15-20 of it.
The stores themselves are pretty happy about it as well, with increased sales reported right across the country as kids - and some adults - demanded more and more toys with their groceries. Foodstuffs, the franchisor of New World stores, isn't saying how much!
Unfortunately, the win will come with a conundrum: Foodstuffs is also the franchisor for Four Square and Pak 'n' Save stores, and I'll bet they were hit as hard as the opposition giant, Countdown. Having exposed how fickle customers can be in deserting their grocery store for a few bauble, Foodstuffs have now thrown Countdown a challenge - find a marketing campaign as good, and the extra customers will be all opposition buyers.
Copyright © Alan Charman