Yesterday fans of ITV’s flagship soap operas Emmerdale and Coronation Street were treated to a series of irreverent, humorous and cheeky adverts for a discount supermarket.
No surprise there, given the proliferation of such ads by Lidl and recently Iceland, following in the footsteps of Aldi’s ‘Like brands’ campaign. The only difference yesterday was that the retailer in question was Morrisons.
“But that’s not a discounter!” I hear you cry, and of course you’d be right – the point is that these ads with messages such as ‘Love sausages, love ‘em cheaper’ or ‘Love ham. Love it cheaper’ and so on – you get the picture – are clearly designed to convince shoppers that there is no longer any need to visit the discounters because Morrisons can meet all their pricing needs.
The ads are linked to the 1,200 price cuts the retailer announced yesterday, which saw average cuts of 17% and up to 60% in some cases.
Morrisons has been losing out to the discounters on a bigger scale than any of its rivals, although the issue of how to deal with the continued growth of Aldi and Lidl is one that has all of the big supermarkets scratching their heads.
Yesterday’s move has been broadly welcomed by City analysts and industry watchers, and it is fair to say this is something that had to be done.
The task for Morrisons is two-fold, however. Firstly it must convince shoppers the cuts are genuine, that they are permanent, and that it isn’t raising prices on other items around the store. And secondly, it must convince shoppers that with price not being such an issue, Morrisons quality and provenance are clear differentiators.
A cursory look on sites such as Moneysavingexpert.com suggests that shoppers will take a lot of convincing – for Morrisons’ sake we must hope that lots of them are fans of Corrie.
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