Devil's Advocate

Mincing words

2009-11-18T18:32:00Z

In Scotland, mince pies are not what they might seem. In fact if you dig about in the chiller section in Tesco, you'll find them labelled superfluously (north of the border) as 'Scotch Pies'. (I can't imagine the good Celtic folk of Cornwall ask for anything but a plain old 'pasty'.) Thus hang about in a local baker's for any length of time and the same principle applies - ask for a mince pie and they'll know exactly what you mean. I was therefore amused to hear from my pal Ken that, feeling a bit peckish, he'd popped into the nearest Gregg's and requested one of the same, only to be met with the perplexing and somewhat irate retort "Is that a mince pie or a mince pie you're wanting?" (And apparently no indication by nod, wink or well-aimed glance at any differentiating pile of comestibles.) Calling the implacable assistant's bluff, he swiftly replied "I've changed my mind - I'll have a bridie", but nevertheless was sufficiently intrigued by the exchange to relay its details onward. Okay, so Christmas approaches and no doubt festive fare is now on offer, but I did wonder how a foreign visitor would have coped with the linguistic conundrum. Oh... on the way down the street, trying to eat surreptitiously, Ken also mentioned he got a poke in the eye... but that's another one for local consumption only!

Coupon blooper at the Super

2009-11-11T10:09:00Z

Roughly one-third of people who intend to respond to an offer actually do it. This thought came to mind as I was waiting patiently for my string of coupons to print at the Sainsbury's checkout. A much-vaunted megabucks initiative........ but why, I wondered, have they left it until I've finished my shopping before hitting me with the offers? I'm running late as it is (the woman in front got a re-scan), surely they don't expect me to go back around the store? Okay - so that's being a little ingenuous..... but from now on their investment is at the mercy of my (dis)organisation. That spells trouble. Apparently they're going to issue a billion coupons. That'll be the best part of a billion never making it back to the store. Something seems amiss here. Sure, I know there was a time when they had coupon machines in the foyer, and everyone just walked past them, but there must be a better way to influence repeat purchase without erecting so many barriers to response - especially when they've got the consumer there in the first place, ready and eager to buy. And all that coupon confetti in the age of the electron! Why not just concentrate on Reward card holders (fast-trackers, even), and physically intercept a willing portion of them on arrival? A quick scan of the plastic, and bingo - they'd capture just as many participants, no paper wasted, and potentially no admin needed. Easy.

Red sky at night, cottage delight

2009-11-04T22:53:00Z

I'm constantly entertained by the stuff kids come out with. Only at the start of this term, two of ours independently came home to announce that their respective form mistresses were Miss Cane and Miss Smacky (quite close, in fact: Miss Kane and Miss Mackie... an ominous-sounding pair merely lacking the Trunchbull as head). So I'm always on the alert for lateral interpretations of sounds that we've long ago lost the childlike talent to hear. Another example was a question I got recently... "Dad - what's a shallawander?" (Surely you remember? Goosey goosey gander, with a shallawander.) It's great. And so easy to overlook that vast army of listeners out there who hear something completely different to what we think we're telling them. I suppose on the plus side, they often imagine something far more vivid than we could ever portray: I recall admonishing: "Don't drop crumbs, it attracts vermin".... to receive the reply "Who's Vermin?" I can just picture him. Wonderful.

Advertising hot air

2009-10-30T10:02:00Z

When you think about it, the average bottle of spirits is half full. At least, I'm sure this mathematical rule-of-thumb must apply to stock on display in the on-trade. I've often been struck, therefore (in Scottish bars especially, where a plethora of ancient malts stand to tired attention) by the amount of air on display. Backlit bottles look great when they're full - golden, honeyed, alluring - but half empty or worse... the effect is the opposite. I was shocked, therefore, to discover a brand that I've come to rely upon for its distinctive dark packaging - always consistent, identifiable even at a slurred distance, determinedly defying far-flung bartenders' efforts to mispronounce it and sell you the local hooch - has moved into clear glass. The product in question is Drambuie - currently proudly advertising its new bottle via a neck-collar in supermarkets. The stuff inside looks as appetising as ever... but if this same packaging is heading for the on-trade... I fear for its appeal as nitrogen gradually takes precedence.

Tesco Mind Bogol

2009-10-17T18:36:00Z

When is a promotion not a promotion? The answer - it looks to me - is when it's a BOGOF in Tesco. Widely reported in the past 24 hours, Tesco is to replace its perishable BOGOFs with BOGOLs : buy one, get one later (apparently you get a coupon so you can 'GOF' when it suits you). The idea, it seems, is a response to criticism that BOGOFs encourage waste: people stock up on stuff they can't eat in time, and end up binning it. Fine in principle... but one small flaw. Why would a supplier pay a small fortune to a retailer to run a promotion that doesn't sell any extra stock? Isn't the idea that people DO stock up... that they DO buy more than usual... that they actually change their habits for a short while, perhaps even getting to like the product in the process? Why fund just a normal purchase (next week, next month) when it doesn't do anything for sales, penetration, loyalty... or whatever? Mind bogoling (sic). And another thing - there's one fact we all know for sure about coupon redemption... it's never 100%... much, much less, indeed. Some interesting implications there, I reckon!

Fear is the key

2009-10-15T14:28:00Z

Apparently 41% of homes still have the government's Swine Flu leaflet, four months after receiving it. These eye-watering statistics (brought courtesy of CCB Fast.MAP, a survey of 983 UK-profiled adults) show just what is possible when the consumer gets sufficiently motivated. It's only a shame that we have to feel something is life-threatening before we sit up and take notice. Maybe it's time for a more hard-nosed approach to copywriting - we've all heard of the success of the 'Buy IBM and keep your job' campaign (and anyone remember the "B.O." ads for Lifebuoy?) - what with all the gloom and doom around right now, the climate is perfect for the introduction of a pinch of fear into marketing communications. For instance: 'Look like a prune... or buy our anti-wrinkle cream.' '99% of victims survive train crashes.' 'Get a TV licence or we'll kill you'.... oh, no - they already do that one.

Coup de Tesco?

2009-10-06T20:51:00Z

Hoots Mon - so Tesco say they'll only accept coupons if you buy the product? (Should I misdoot? Or will the day will soon arrive when I won't be expected to know the difference between misredemption and malredemption?) A pat on the back to the high heidyins at the ISP if this comes true. Imagine all the brilliant leaflets we can start to create again... and the responses we can measure with confidence in the success (or otherwise) of our persuasive skills. Great news, especially if the rest of the trade falls into line. The only downside?... I expect total coupon redemption to fall. (Think about it.)

Same equals more

2009-10-01T19:12:00Z

I buy cress several times a week, and must personally have accounted for a good few acres of West Sussex, UK over the past few years. But despite these brassicophile tendencies, I couldn't have told you how much it costs. Grab it. Zap it. Bag it. (Fast-track, you see.) Until - that is - this week, when my attention was caught by a shelf barker: "Price check. Sainsbury's salad cress 24p. Tesco price 24p." Interesting... so it's only 24p... maybe I should eat more of the stuff? I moved on to the avocados, mechanically squeezing one after the next to find the store's only ripe fruit... my thoughts returned to the cress. Why are they telling me it's the same price as in Tesco? Is that good? Surely LESS would be good? This feels a bit like organic: they highlight organic (equals good), then you wonder if that means most of the rest of the stuff (ergo chemically enhanced) is not so good. From cress at the same price as Tesco can I induce that tomatoes, cucumber, celery, radish, peppers, onions, leaves and the like (all grabbed, zapped and bagged) cost MORE? Surely they'd be shouting about it if it were less? Then, am I bovvered? Well, no actually - Sainsbury's is a better offering for me - but I do wonder if lots of people might be. If price is your thing, would you find this particular communication strategy ('parity') reassuring or disconcerting? If it were applied to staples, then maybe the former... but cress? I'm not so sure.

Cardinal sin

2009-09-23T11:53:00Z

How much would you accept in lieu of the chance to spin a coin to win a million? Ten pounds? One hundred? A grand... ten... a hundred (grand)? I might just be getting warm. What I do know is that I wouldn't have to raise you to the statistical outcome, which is half a million. Most folk would probably take a much smaller guaranteed sum, rather than risk getting nothing. This is the Cardinal Utility Principle, and is a very handy piece of knowledge if you're in the business of incentivising people. Thus I thought it was strange when I read that a part-time shop-assistant had mistakenly sold a batch of valuable medals (priced at £1850) for the princely sum of £18.50! Okay - nothing exactly strange about that - just a genuine mistake - but what did puzzle me was that the shopkeeper, on arriving back from his lunch to discover his loss, promptly advertised a £250 reward for the purchasers to return the goods! Call me cynical, but I just get the feeling that this particular incentive isn't going to work.

As mentioned on the tin

2009-09-15T20:48:00Z

Having been downed by some hostile variant of swine flu over the past few days I've been methodically working my way through the healthcare fixtures of my local stores. Trouble is, it's me that's been doing the 'working' and not the various patent remedies. Okay - perhaps that's harsh. Take cough mixture (literally, metaphorically)... and what happens? It works. You cough. And cough. And cough. Who am I to complain when it does what it says on the tin? But seriously, you probably get the gist. Yet I sit (propped up) and scratch my head. How do they get away with selling all these things that don't actually do what they claim? When I write ads that are the tiniest bit risque, hyper-cautious marketers and lawyers come seething out of the woodwork to eliminate the idea... yet where were they when I needed them to delist these useless products? When you think about it, it's an extraordinary indictment upon marketing when a handful of brands are able to promote themselves on the grounds that they actually work. We still live in the age of snake oil. Look around your home and see just how many examples you can find: whitening toothpaste, anti-wrinkle cream, carpet spot-remover, child politener.... then all the packaging that either doesn't open without resorting to power tools, or that tears nowhere near the tear-strips and gives you paper-cuts into the bargain. Thankfully, there are some things that do work, and - to cut a long story short - I feel my cough returning so I'm just off into the garage for that trusty tin of WD40.

Christmas Terror Campaign

2009-09-04T11:51:00Z

I heard on the radio that shopkeepers in one part of the country have received mysterious threats to the effect that, should they promote Christmas goods too early, then the worst will happen. As far as I know, 'the worst' wasn't specified. It did strike a chord, though, as earlier that day among the junk on the doormat I'd noticed my first Christmas offer of 2009: Good Housekeeping (not mine, you understand) suggesting you should 'Get Christmas All Wrapped Up' by sending some unsuspecting acquaintance a year's subscription. Groan. I hope the awkward squad don't get one. I can sympathise - both from a personal and professional perspective - if only we could just have Christmas in December life would be so much simpler and I'm sure we'd sell more. As someone who's never needed more than Christmas Eve to do the shopping, I am bemused by these people who tell you they've got it sorted as soon as they're out of the traffic jams on the August Bank Holiday (maybe the traffic jams are caused by everyone going to Bluewater to get their presents?). As anyone in SP will testify, sales promotions work best as short-term activities, and a key part of their appeal is their novelty. Novelty, by definition, is short-term - and for proof of its benefits, ask yourself why Cadbury only sells Creme Eggs between January and Easter. Christmas, too, is about novelty and - as arguably the world's biggest sales promotion - should be protected as such. While no one could condone the type of campaign alluded to in the opening, you can't help wondering if it's the ghost of Guy Fawkes having had enough of being upstaged.

Broadband threat to Bovril

2009-08-31T18:10:00Z

According to The Guardian 81% of people working in the West Midlands would up and leave if their job permitted - the idea being that universal broadband might one day make such a Brummie exodus possible - with the East Midlands faring almost as badly in the reported popularity stakes amongst its discontented denizens. Apparently it's the lure of the coast that does it, with Devon and Cornwall being the main attraction - although the report indicates there's 3 million who want to come to Scotland. Hoots Mon! Products, such as the above-mentioned meaty staple could suffer catastrophic declines in sales, with the likes of Melton Mowbray pork pies swapped for Cornish pasties, and Banks' Bitter given a good tanking by Caley's Deuchars IPA. The survey - commissioned by Orange - just goes to show how ridiculous market research can be, and highlights the difference between useless statistics and good common-sense and intuition that any marketer worth their salt possesses. As a regular visitor to the Midlands, I have to say, I can't think of a more contented bunch of Brits anywhere in the land, and the idea that they'd up sticks and scarper is - like their favourite meal of chicken vindaloo - best taken with a good pinch of salt.

Hoots Mon

2009-08-19T11:32:00Z

I've often heard a Scot use the expression 'Och Aye' (although never the apocryphal 'Och Aye the Noo', despite much encouragement on my part), but it was its near-relative in the headline above that leapt to mind as I was perusing the porridge pack this morning. (Well, it beats the news.) I'm always on the look out for vaguely white-coloured Caledonian connections, as potential partners for the annual VisitScotland Winter White campaign (pause to blow trumpet - the most-acclaimed promotion of 2009 with 4 Awards at this year's ISP), and a bowl of oats with fresh Scottish milk seems a pretty good fit. Damn fine oats, too - Sainsbury's organic - and I was just thinking we must get in touch, when I read the blurb. Here it is: "For generations Scots have been successfully bracing themselves against the cold and damp with a delicious porridge to keep the furnaces burning. We source our oats from Scotland because the rainy climate is ideal for plumping up the oats. And plump oats put a better tasting porridge in your bowl." Does the copywriter secretly work for VisitEngland! Don't they know Edinburgh has the same rainfall as Rome? (And you save on the factor 50.) Hoots Mon!

The unadvertised mind

2009-08-16T13:50:00Z

I've read that we're exposed to between 254 and umpteen thousand commercial messages every day. Last week, in foreign climes, I'd thought I'd try an experiment - is it feasible to go 7 days without encountering an ad or a promotion? No tv or radio, no newspapers or magazines, no wifi or email... mission impossible? Surprisingly not. Trapped within a rather pleasant resort, pinned down by that big yellow thing I'd almost forgotten about (the sun... and not the tabloid version), I soon realised that all I had to do was resist the schoolboy temptation to stare whenever one of those little planes buzzed over dragging a banner through the blue yonder (in any event, printed in words unintelligible to me), or avert my eyes each time I sauntered past one of my less strong-willed fellow holidaymakers, lying like a hollow-cheeked smoker in the ominous shadow of a Daily Telegraph or similar, unable to resist their fix. Who cares who won the Test? Swine flu - what's that? Recession... yawn. And it almost worked... 5 days in and (provided one didn't count the brochures for hot stone massages and analysing one's golf swing) my brain was becoming remarkably accustomed to... well, nothing really. It was great. I was just beginning to think I'd last out the week... when, searching for a small round dimpled white ball in a clump of tastily laden fig trees, finally emerging defeated but replete with figs onto the last tee... and there it was: The €1million Hole-in-One Challenge! Unmissable, Impactful, Irresistible! Attractive girl waiting to take your money, video camera at the ready just in case you fluked it. Naturally I didn't make it, but it was with a wry smile that I returned the clubs... trust good old SP to break through firewall and come up with something a bit different to boot.

It's not like Tesco to resort to euphemism

2009-08-02T10:08:00Z

What does 'Rounded Down' mean to you? When I saw the POS in Tesco yesterday I was firstly intrigued to discover this dusty expression from school maths textbooks has sneaked onto the supermarket shelf, and secondly by the maths itself (or perhaps I should say arithmetic). Soon I'd spotted lots of prices 'Rounded Down', but...... not as we know it. Just to take one example, a pack of Vanish had a shelf talker announcing "£3 - Rounded Down Prices." Well, a nice round price, certainly, a lucky prime number and all, but upon closer investigation the small print revealed it had been rounded down from £4.17. At this point I pictured my maths teacher and his red pen. Now - you can't criticise Tesco for giving such a good price cut (unless of course you're of the school that believes Ehrenberg's studies proving discounts undermine brand loyalty), but one can't help wondering if they're underplaying their hand. Forgetting for the moment that the average reading age of supermarket shoppers is eleven, with maths trailing somewhere behind, and thus the possibility that 'Rounding' is not everyday currency as a concept.... forgetting all that.... it doesn't strike me as the most powerful proposition. A price cut from £4.17 to £3 means that for your £3 you effectively get 40% EXTRA FREE (okay, rounded up from 39%). Technically you're probably not allowed to say this (although I don't know it if has been tested), but to me it smacks more acutely of the price war, the law of the jungle, the ring the machete... unlike the gently bucolic pastime of rounding.... which for me conjures images of my retirement, a panama hat and a butterfly net!