Sometimes it’s better to rise above it.
The unseemly spat over pricing between some of the UK’s largest supermarkets rolled on this week, with Tesco unveiling new press ads having a pop at Asda’s 10% price guarantee.
One ad ironically outlines Asda’s “12 steps to saving”, highlighting, far from subtly, the main problem (from a consumer’s point of view) with the price guarantee: namely, that the burden is currently on the shopper to collect any saving.
Another ad says “you can drive a trolley through” the 10% claim, using a lengthy receipt to show that shoppers could save almost £60 on a shop costing more than £200 at Asda.
Both ads point out that Tesco will redeem the Asda vouchers. Both are pretty clunky. And neither give you the urge to feast.
The latter Tesco ad closely echoes an effort last week headlined ‘Morrisons crunches Asda’. That claimed a saving of nearly £50 at the Bradford-based chain on a trolley costing £128.56 at Asda. And it appeared in pages of the Daily Telegraph, whose readers, you would think, are not obvious targets for the pure price message.
The big winner over Christmas, of course, was Sainsbury’s, whose like-for-like growth comfortably outpaced all three of the above. In a two-page spread in yesterday’s Daily Express, the supermarket focused on one of its own offers – a new deal of five family meals for £20 – rather than sniping. That too features the receipt motif, but pride of place goes to the food, which looks great, rather than jibes at rivals.
It’s a truism that confidence breeds success – and nothing is more of a turn-off than the whiff of desperation that is hard to escape in some of the others’ ads. Sometimes it’s best to stick to your gameplan and not be diverted by spoiling tactics.
More slices of Daily Bread
No comments yet