Brand Match-up

Sainsbury’s new CEO, Mike Coupe, described the current state of the supermarket industry as ‘a perfect storm’ yesterday. Turmoil exists with the traditional powers being threatened by brands such as Aldi, Lidl and Asda, who are seeing rapid growth. This has been exacerbated primarily by the high-profile troubles of Tesco, whose senior finance team is still in disarray and whose shares are the worst performer on the FTSE 100 this year.

The media has, of course, reflected this strife, led by Private Eye’s delightful satire of the ‘Every Little Helps’ ads; the core messaging of Tesco’s marketing strategy that helped them to become market leaders way back in 1995. This will undoubtedly have provided much mirth in the finance departments of their competitors. With the annual battleground of Chr*stmas (shhhh!!) fast approaching, open-season has been declared on Tesco (and indeed the other bigger names in the sector).

A prime example of this is the media feeding frenzy in this morning’s Metro. This is one of the finest collections of reactive ads that we’ve seen – certainly since the Royal birth last year.

It starts with Lidl, who (once you get past a somewhat baffling ad for a hydraulic jack on page 5), has a pop at Sainsbury’s, who are still reeling from the fallout of Postergate where a staff member inadvertently put a staff room poster on public display…

Lidl later continue with their push for an increased share of wealthier customers by promoting their Wine Cellar with the examples at a healthy price point (£8.99 - £16.99). 

Sainsbury’s, who appear with a full page ad on page 10, has chosen to completely disregard Tesco as a traditional competitor and instead turn their focus – and they hope, their customers’ focus - onto price comparison with Asda.  

Asda, in turn, has peppered the paper by taking space on four separate spreads, with four different ad formats. The most impressive of these is the sublimely timed full page ad on page 23, which confirms their price-point as a key USP and hints that Sainsbury’s are a little late to the game.

Morrisons has an unremarkable ad in an unremarkable place, while Tesco, inevitably trying to keep a low profile, yet needing to show its face at the party, has shuffled in quietly with a non-contentious, almost anonymous looking ad hidden away deep in the middle of the book.

So, who are our winners in all this jostling? 

Well, Sainsbury's has put itself firmly on a path to demonstrating value, while Lidl and Asda have both taken very effective swipes at them with some great quick reaction creative. 

All three have failed to recognise Tesco as even being a competitor, which is perhaps far more damning. 

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Creatively compromised ?!?

Whilst we are all for media creativity and generating IMPACT and STAND OUT in conventional, traditional newsprint environments - we can't help but feel that the Metro has somewhat overdone it today and 'sold out' on the less conventional creative formats they offer.

On pages 26/27, Halifax has made the most of running CHECKERBOARD placements across the spread to deliver multiple messages and amplify their EXTRA proposition.

Turn the page and we see that Ryanair has adopted the break-out creative ZIG-ZAG format. Rather than being impactful, this actually appears overly busy and - confusingly - almost an extension of the Halifax EXTRA ads due to colour similarities and as a result of running these formats consecutively...

As if that wasn't enough, turn the page again and another ZIG-ZAG format is running across the spread on pages 30/31.

Usually, we would deem this to be a highly effective use of space, demonstrating media and creative teams working in synergy to deliver the Relish ad within newsprint. Instead, with today's spreads the concurrent 'unconventional' media formats have far less impact - and frankly look conventional!

This has resulted in a sequence of busy spreads, with a mish-mash of editorial squeezed in throughout. 

It seems as though Metro has lived up to its front page headline and forced the advertisers into a constricted space; no Extra value and hardly something to Relish!  

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Sky vs. BT Sport

There can be no ignoring the current battle between SKY and BT Sport for Premier League fixtures and we've been following how this war has evolved in the media, especially advertising tactics.

"BT sparked a price war with Sky last month when it launched free live Premier League action to football fans for the first time - if they buy its broadband starting at £10 a month" (The Independent). This came just days after BT launched its excessive £100m+ campaign which bought ubiquity within commuter press.

But now it seems as though Sky isn't going to sit back and let this happen. In today's Metro, ads from both BT and SKY attempt to have a pop at the rival:

The big broadcaster rivalry can only be a good thing for media owners. But in the long-term, will this be just as beneficial for consumers or are we just paying for excessive advertising budgets to fund media spats?

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