Woolworths’ return to ‘fresh food people’ tagline splits marketers

How relevant are store people when Woolies noted the increasing shift to online with its dark stores announcement yesterday?

Its looks pretty silly relaunching its former self when the category is changing so much. Nostalgia doesn’t change perceptions.

If I were a shareholder, I’d be slightly anxious

As with DJ’s, (There’s no other store) the original was the better positioning and it takes guts to admit that back is sometimes forward, in a marketing sense. Well done Woolies marketing.

When did you ever walk into a woolies and the store manager gave your child a banana or the bloke in the deli pulled a snapper out and talked you through the merits of it’s freshness or the check-out chick smiled at you?

Someone call the ASB and report them for false advertising.

“It’s show time” – worst line in a commercial, ever.

This should be banned for misleading advertising..

Can you tell me where that Woolies is?! I want to go there, cos the local Woolies I got to have moody grumpy fat sods….

I love Aldi. Loads of produce that is relevant and needed. In and out, no messing and if you don’t bring a bag, you get charged for one (fair enough, it truly encourages less waste). I even buy some of the random stuff in the middle of the store. (Prior to a camping trip I scored a hep of kit that has favoured pretty well tbh.)

In the new age of digital media and marketing, will the two big baddies cling on to power or will we see an increase in brand agnostic consumers, like we are seeing in the UK?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear.....-dead.html

heap of kit* and fared pretty well*

Well done to Ray Sharp and co. on the original campaign. Created before there was any digital forum to say so.

So that makes two former Droga5 clients return to their brand heritage. VB & Woolies. Next, Qantas?

We are entering an age wherein people need to see that the promotion has some inkling of truth to it.
When I go to Woolies and find year-old tasteless apples, bananas that rot within two days, tomatoes that are as hard as pebbles and lamb that has more fat than meat… the jingle of freshness going through my brain makes me want to scream.
I do try not to go to Woolworths for that reason (and also because they are gradually replacing brands with their home brands) but sometimes I do have to.
The ad concept may have worked well for them but I am not convinced that consumers are going to be hoodwinked as easily these days.

How can anyone seriously like Aldi? When I am in an Aldi I get the feeling I am the only person shopping there that is:
– Employed
– Literate
– Not high on white substances that resemble shards of glass

What’s changed since the first launch is the Australian Consumer Law which prohibits false and misleading advertising.

The ACCC has tested how this law applies to advertising freshly baked bread,. In June this year the Federal Court found that the Coles signage and advertising freshly baked bread when in fact the bread was re-baked from frozen was false and misleading. Some of the Coles bread had come all the way over the sea from Ireland.

My question is – how can you call food fresh if it has been transported and held in cold storage for weeks or months, like most farm produce?

So just wanting to make sure I have this right… Leo Burnett are still smarting about their breakthrough Fresh Food campaign a lifetime ago, and now that they have the account back, they are bringing the campaign back too?! Perhaps a little less nostalgia and a little more research is needed. Last time I tried to buy “fresh” lettuce in Woolworths, it was 4 days past the use-buy date!

It takes so much time and effort for a brand to build a distinctive brand asset that it’s a shame to see them so often abandoned for one reason or another. Well done to Woolworths for recognising the equity in their line and going back.

Liked it (despite my agreement with all the above views about it being a misplaced blast from the past). The average punter probably will too.

The original positioning was correct at the time. In the Internet era where the determined consumer can discover the truth at a click, cold storage produce sold by a business that gouges farmers and FMCG suppliers can’t claim to be Fresh and expect people to swallow it.

I’ve just wasted over a minute of my life on a piece of commercial rubbish. The worst part is that I can’t even get the minute back. Worse ad I have seen in the past couple of years…thats being kind.

That 1987 ad! Ah, eighties advertising. It’s like a competition to see how much voiceover and lyrics you can cram into sixty seconds

Is this deliberately badly executed to look old fashioned? Someone please explain. If not the production house needs to take a seriously long hard look at themselves.

@Nick. The UK’s favourite Supermarket is Aldi. The well positioned store at Manly Wharf is certainly not full of derelict’s. Sadly the Manly store doesn’t sell European wine like many others do. I am guessing you shop in Harrods, following your comments?

How is this crap any different to the previous crap?

‘The Fresh Food People’ vs ‘Australia’s Fresh Food People’???

Seriously please knock some sense into yourselves. It’s all rubbish, just like their ‘food’.

Love all the pundits here (like ‘Sing it’) who talk about the ‘average punter’ and what this ‘average punter’ will like or not like.
It is so f&@$ing superior.
Or worse delusional.
‘Ooh ..being an ‘above average’ person I of course don’t like this appalling tv commercial for Woolworths but those inferior beings who earn less money than me and live in a lees salubrious area will probably adoooore it!’
PLEASE can we stop using ‘average punter ‘-there is no such thing you wankers.

I like the ad.

Ultimately it’s a sense of disappointment: they maybe the fresh food people, but they are not the fresh advertising people.

As an industry we like to poke holes when fast food advertising and menu boards show burgers which are nothing like the product itself – similarly we should hold Woolworths to account for how detached this depicted experience is from reality.

I thought it was pretty good – certainly fresh

I despise the disingenuous image that they’re selling.

Staff at Woolworths (or damn near any supermarket) aren’t all smiles when you walk in. They don’t hand your children fruit as they extol the virtues of the corporate devil-machine that they work for. And I don’t blame them, because they work a job that is effectively a dead end, one that pays poorly and has little to no benefits. Trust me, nobody is ecstatic that they work at Woolies. So knock it off.

As to the actual quality of their food….. buy some of their ‘freshly’ baked bread or rolls and marvel as they go hard and stale IN A DAY. Enjoy watery oranges and tasteless apples! Meat that is 80 marble, and stringy to boot! Mince treated with chemicals in order to change its original sickly off grey coloring to a healthy pink pallor! THEY’VE GOT IT ALL.

Dearest Starkweather,
I work at Woolies. I pack shelves. My shift is 7pm-Midnight, the store closes at 9. Therefore, there’s 2 hours each evening where I interact with the customers. And strangely enough, sir, I actually AM ecstatic about working there. Because I like helping people. And because – not being a Rhodes Scholar like some – I’ve done a heap of crappy jobs in the last 20 years. And if anyone asks me, I’ll tell ’em – if I’d known about night-filling when I was 18, I would’ve been doing it happily for 2 decades instead of the shite kitchen/service/retail sector I noodled about in. I’m on a permanent part-time roster, which accrues sick leave and annual leave, and I can ask for more or less work when needed. My union makes sure we’re not taken advantage of, and my dozen-or-so co-workers have been in their positions for an AVERAGE of 7 years; if the job was as soul-sapping and miserable as you espouse, I don’t think that would be the case. So, Starkweather, for those of us who didn’t scale the lofty heights of tertiary education – or were too lazy to get a trade – minimum wage is a reality. And if you have to work for minimum wage, I’d thoroughly endorse packing shelves: there’s a big pile o’ stuff, you fill it, then you go home. ‘Dead end job that pays poorly with no benefits’? I could think of plenty worse. Smile, cobber – it might not happen! (Or is it just the southern weather? Yeah, I guess I’d be miserable too…) PS but don’t get me wrong – the jingles on high-rotation WILL drive me postal one night. Just sayin’….