Can you believe that some people flick through TV ads? It’s ridiculous. Especially as fmcg has a long history of brilliant advertising. The first ad ever to air on British TV was for toothpaste and brands haven’t stopped trying to better themselves since. Retailers love it, too.
Add it all together and it’s the reason why The Grocer has completely revamped its Top Campaigns coverage for this year – and we want you to enter your finest work. And it doesn’t have to be a TV ad. Campaigns can have used any medium, including print, digital, TV, social media, experiential, PR, direct mail and posters. Oh, and entry is free.
Also, for the very first time, Top Campaigns (which will appear in the huge 17 December issue of The Grocer) will award a winner for best retail Christmas campaign in recognition of the efforts made by the supermarkets to create an ad so compelling we all head down there to buy a turkey.
Speaking of turkeys, will Tesco bring back their family ads? The ones so excruciating you wonder how, when the lights went up at the end of the test screening, Dave Lewis wasn’t wearing the exact same expression he had when he saw how grim Tesco’s pension deficit was this week.
How about Sainsbury’s? Never one to take itself too seriously, in 2014 it set its Christmas ad in the trenches during the First World War. In 2015, perhaps mindful of being too serious, it had an advert where a cat wrecked a house or something. And it’s a hazy memory, but in 2013 it released its magnum opus, a 45-minute film directed by Ridley Scott, whose lesser works include Alien, Gladiator and snorefest Blade Runner. This is a brief excerpt that might jerk a tear. So it’s hard to predict what it will come out with in 2016 – only that it will probably have something to do with Argos.
Once again Asda will be desperate to aim its ads at mums but still has scorch marks around its fingers following the ‘sexist’ debacle of 2012. You can still find someone to argue about that if you try hard enough. Since then it’s ads have been strictly benign though they got a shot in the arm last year thanks to this effervescent ad. It did nothing for it, however – the following February it revealed its biggest quarterly sales fall on record. At the time.
In 2015, Morrisons became the only people to ever sack Ant and Dec. Instead it made its staff the stars of its 2015 ad. Seasonal favourite parsnips were conspicuous by their absence, however. Meanwhile Aldi and Lidl produced charming Christmassy ads that did nothing to stop its unseasonal habit of pinching sales from the big four.
Anyway, it’s far too early to start talking about Christmas. And there were brilliant campaigns launched every week in 2016. So read all the details about how to enter them here. The deadline is 28 October, which means time is ticking. But you will get an early Christmas present on 17 December if they win.
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