Merry Marketing – since the end of July in fact. When I’m Prime Minister (and it could be any day now) I’m going to put some really important stuff in to effect swiftly and with no consultation at all. First, Christmas will not be mentioned by retailers, marketers or human beings until December 1st. A whole 25 days for us all to do Christmas business, what an enormous festive window that is in this age of immediacy. Furthermore I’ll give a full tax rebate for the year to anyone who holds out until December 15. Progressive stuff.
Back in reality and obviously keen to re-build my professional reputation given the anti-everything policy proposal above, there are many Merry Marketing Things to report. I’ve been looking for them and want to highlight just three that are making me happy.
1) TUI’s advertising. The Thomson re-brand has been underway across various markets for over two years and the UK is last. I have no idea to what degree the various internal and external strands of implementation have gone well nor am I as interested as I should be in the architectural neatness of ditching Thomson but I do care about the brilliance of ‘we cross the Ts, dot the Is and put U in the middle’. How happy is that? A customer-friendly proposition which just happens to announce the change and attempts to tell a story about ‘why TUI?’ without actually saying anything at all. Reinforcement, positivity and an integrated campaign with a driving ambition to build awareness quickly. And a logo that smiles at me. Smiling back at you TUI.
2) Schweppes is bothering to innovate and invest. Why has it taken so long? You could have knocked me over with a cocktail straw to read that this brand was still market leader with 32.6% share in 2016. I mean, really? I havn’t been able to find it on shelf in major retail outlets without a magnifying glass and the risk of acute neck pain from the downward sweep to bottom shelf, nor can I find it on-trade, where entry level G&T these days seems to be uber-premium gins with a hint of blueberry and jockstrap, supplemented by a wildly over-priced Fever Tree and served with a spirit of smug marketer. Thing is, not only Fever Tree will do. Spitting out the crushed pink peppercorns served up to me in anger, I’ve had a real lid on my G&T penchant for about 2 years, basically since it became impossible to find a basic Gordon’s and Schweppes anywhere. Selfishly therefore, I wish you luck Schweppes. I’m not sure if the rumoured 6.6 mil investment will do it and I’m pretty sure I won’t need to bond with your new 1783 proposition (nice packaging though) but call me please when I can go to my local and order a G&T without being traded up to something I don’t want to pay for because I taste no added-value and which stopped tasting like a G&T a while ago. I’ll be your first customer.
3) The Chairman of M&S has apparently commented that their food offers are a bit confusing. Mr Norman, I salute you and I join you wholeheartedly in a de-segmentation of your global cuisine pricing. I’ve just come from 3 days in a food hall trying to figure out which deli SKUs fall in to the 3 for £7 and whether any of the meal deal offers achieve anything beyond blasting through the weekly budget and discussing blood pressure and glucose levels with my doctor. Gave up and bought an over-priced bread roll instead (he also thinks pricing of their staples needs looking at, hurrah again). Please Mr Chairman, more!…..so, I’d like to encourage a review of customer benefits overall. This is based on the amount of effort I’m required to put in in order to reap them. As a Sparks card holder I get a regular email listing ‘my offers’ (please could this personal pronoun go the way that ‘Your’ M& S had to go? They’re the data team’s offers really, not mine). Until I bother to login and ‘add your offers to your card’ they don’t actually exist. You’re happy to let me pass through your checkouts without receiving these benefits that are ‘mine’ unless I’ve done all the work. Not all your nice checkout people are offering the guaranteed-to-irritate-the-queue option of adding the offers there and then and I suspect as Christmas queues approach there’ll be even less of it. But I’m trying to give merry marketing news here, so let’s agree you’re heading up the right aisle. In short – your food may be tasty, but I just want you to reward me at your cost and effort for spending time in your store trying to decipher the buyer journey you want me to take. I’ll logon when I want to, not when the retailer wants me to.
Thing is, Tesco convert my points (how do I just convert ‘my’ Sparks points in to cash value – somebody….?) and send me money off vouchers regularly. It’s simple, it’s an instant reward and it comes with a ‘thank you for shopping’ note. That’s Merry Marketing.
