‘It’s all about the customer’: Woolworths’ top marketer on its new brand campaign
Woolworths has overhauled its brand advertising with a series of spots aimed at explaining why people shop there. Its top marketer Andrew Hicks talks Mumbrella through the rationale for the new campaign.
Just six months after the shock decision to dump Leo Burnett as its advertising agency in favour of M&C Saatchi Woolworths has launched a huge new brand push, moving the supermarket chain away from the price-based messaging to one based around its values.
Woolworths chief marketing officer Andrew Hicks tells Mumbrella the supermarket’s new campaign will help it reconnect with consumers and show how the brand is improving.
Hicks tells Mumbrella Woolworths was getting back to the basics of a conversation with its customers and while it would always fight on price, the new narrative of “That’s Why I Pick Woolies” meant it would not be shouting at customers – a thinly veiled reference to rival Coles’ brash and loud ‘Down Down’ marketing.
The campaign kicked off on Sunday night with a warm commercial celebrating the traditional Sunday roast and has continued to roll out new ads over the course of the week touching on various elements of what Woolworths stands for.
Tip: Fix your loyalty scheme, go back to what it used to be (Everyday Rewards) which is what customers loved and used. Why did you f** with it in the first place.
If this new strategy is “all about the customer”, give them what they want. This seems to be the easiest no-brainer that Woolworths won’t do. Why is it so hard to admit you got something wrong, when the rest of the world can see it?
It’s great to focus on end customers and I quite like Woolworths’ new ads, but they need to focus on fixing their well-known culture of not supporting suppliers and the companies/agencies they work with. The reason I don’t shop at Woolworths (unless there’s no other retail option nearby) is that Woolworths are so widely known to shaft suppliers they work with. I work with many companies who supply, or who have supplied, Woolworths – and there are many bad war stories from these companies. I have also worked agency-side for Woolworths and they are well-known for being dreadful to work with – they proved this when we worked with them. Word travels quickly when so many people supply, or work with, such a large company. This is in comparison to the positive stories coming from suppliers and companies working with Costco and Aldi. I have worked with Costco a number of times and they are fantastic to deal with – and the companies I work with who supply Costco and Aldi are thrilled to work with such supportive organisations. Perhaps Woolworths can work on improving their own internal culture, work on a better approach for how they treat the thousands of people they work with, then their reputation might start lifting – their brand-shift needs to come from within the organisation, rather than just relying on ad agencies to try to fix their major culture and organisational issues.
Spot on
If it was just a few suppliers complaining about woolworths then you might think that they are whingers but its the bulk of them and they all have friends and relatives.
Woolworths simply will not address this problem.
Ps i choose not to shop at woolworths
The worth of a campaign is usually in inverse proportion to the amount of rationalisation it requires.
Yeah, just another lazy retro ” feel good ” piece of agency crap, I’d love to see the budget on this spot of art directed wankery. Woolworths, put your own house in order first.
That’s why I avoid woollies like the plague
It’s actually very scary these people in these positions take this long to realise this. Obviously it shows a problem with much of the employment policies from corporate business nowadays.
This is not either revolutionary and / or innovative and that’s why ‘woollies’ will not catch up.
Visit Woolworths Potts Point (and other places), and you’ll see why this is a sham load of nonsense. 10 checkouts, not one with a person behind any of them. A bank of “you provide free checkout labour” pods”, with people struggling to do Woolworths job for them, at their own cost.
The “all about the customer” hypocrisy is sickening.
The underlying contempt for customers, is contemptible.
This is why Woolworths is struggling, and ultimately will fail.
A pity they’re Australia’s largest pokies owners. A huge risk to their brand, and totally incongruous with their ‘fresh and healthy’ pitch to consumers.
The Coles ads might be annoying, but they’re mercifully brief & to the point. The new Woolies ads are long-winded & cheesy. Superficial schmaltz that attempts to portray them as an institution the customer loves deep down & cannot dessert. Fail.
The tv spot is all going along just dandy untill the end when the actor says “That’s why I pick Woolies” and blows it all out of the water.
No one has ever said that. No one will ever will say that. It reeks of old school ad land, totally not grounded in any reality. Come on Woolies – you can’t blatantly manipulate the audiance any more – get with the times.
What a surprise – another smug, self-serving campaign from Woolies. They should stop focusing on trying to explain to everyone how fantastic they are (the outdoor spots that pat themselves on the back for employing young/indigenous people are the best example of this) and maybe return the focus to rewarding customers and removing the perception that they are more expensive then Coles.
Wow, 12 comments and not a single positive statement amongst them! If I were a Woolies senior manager I would be feeling despair and hopelessness over this. As it is, I am in the main an ex-Woolies shopper, having graduated to Aldi for about 90% of my needs. Admittedly there are a few brand-name items I like that Aldi doesn’t stock, so Woolies or Coles must be tolerated for their sakes. But the last straw for me was also the demise of the Everyday Rewards scheme which to me now appears completely pointless.
In the end, though, when you REALLY drill down through the marketing messages, every Woolies ad is basically the same thing: here are some reasons you should shop us, even though you hate the experience.
If that seems harsh, think about an alternative strategy. Suppose the entire marketing were focused around the simple phrase: “Problem Solved”.
Because that is what people really want from their supermarket: they have a problem (what do I fix for dinner/lunch/brekkie? how can I buy [insert commodotized staple] for as little money as it takes for an effective product?), and they want a solution.
All this other stuff, “values”, “lowest prices”, and so forth is off the point.
Yet really tackling “Problem Solved” would have to reach further than marketing, and into providing a shopping experience that was actually useful to and pleasurable for the customer.
It’s not church/synagogue/mosque, the supermarket. It’s a place you buy stuff.
Rewards schemes are a waste of time and money. The only people who benefit are regular shoppers who you get anyway. The Qantas scheme was a massive cash cow – for Qantas. For Woolworths it was just burning cash.