These days, I can't whiz round the shops in Leeds without maneuvering past a couple of experiential marking events / brand experiences. The stands/lorries/huts/inflatable domes are often full of shoppers happily enjoying free food/massages/entertainment or whatever but despite the amount of general Sales Promotion / Promotional Marketing / Shopper Marketing I've done for brands in the … Continue reading why spend on experiential when you’re so far removed from the purchase experience?
Last week, Morrisons simplified their 'Match & More' loyalty scheme to focus on rewarding overall spend with points, completely dropping the Price Match element that sent cardholders vouchers if their shop on certain branded goods would have been cheaper elsewhere. To much less fanfare, last weekend Booths dropped Price Match out of their loyalty scheme too (but they … Continue reading is this the beginning of the end of Price Match?
I was in B&Q last Saturday, trying to help my dad to buy a Gazebo. We stood in the 'garden furniture' aisle and found a big brown cardboard box with a product name and a one inch square photo of a gazebo under it and a price label on the shelf. That was it. We were … Continue reading why bricks and mortar retailers need to keep customer’s smartphones in their pockets
So in the last 48 hours I've been asked to explain what Black Friday is by my sister, the yard manager at the stables, the lady who does my nails, approx 16 focus group respondents and my Dad. Asda have clearly had a very busy and successful day with their enthusiastic embrace of USA-style Black … Continue reading SherlockLives on BlackFriday
I went to visit a friend in London last weekend and we decided to brave Oxford Street since it was their special traffic free VIP shopping day. It was a great idea in principle, but thousands of soggy shoppers clashing umbrellas with each other doesn’t make for a very VIP-ish afternoon (although the fake snow … Continue reading a festive tale of Johnny LouLous and the impromptu middle class sit-in
I was in Bristol last week to run some focus groups and I got there early enough to stretch my legs round the city centre. I couldn’t miss the massive Mercedes promotional set-up in the middle of the main shopping area, complete with three or four cars, a big event structure thingummyjig and a lot … Continue reading dear Mercedes, you might want to rethink your A-class promo activity
Digital channel Dave has installed a branded Man Chair in fifteen Burton stores (for my overseas readers, Burton is a young menswear chain that’s like Topshop for boys, only less cool and with more suits). The Man Chair comes complete with an integrated tablet where shoppers can watch clips of Dave’s content like Red Dwarf. … Continue reading I’m not sure Dave’s Man Chair is a good fit for Burton
I stumbled across two big pieces of promotional activity going on in Leeds yesterday: The gist of this first lot of activity seemed to be, ‘Put Pork on your Fork! Bacon sandwiches are delicious! Eating lower salt ones means you can eat them more often! Here, have a hot bacon butty, the ketchup’s over there.’ … Continue reading an example of quality not quantity when it comes to sampling activity
Just after I’d finished the previous post (I often write posts the day before to avoid that whole post-in-haste-and-then-it’s-stuck-on-the-interwebs-forever thing) I popped out to go to the post office and found this outside the front door: I guessed it was a sample. A smallish 8 servings sized box of All Bran Golden Crunch. The clue … Continue reading All Bran’s sampling is all wrong
I’ve started wading through the transcripts of last week’s focus groups*. The groups were for a food brand and when I asked respondents about promotions and in store sampling one lady piped up: My friend does it. Yeah she promotes things like that, she did cheese last time. I got quite a few cheese vouchers. … Continue reading PM or SP, it’s all about quality
