Mooching around Bolton last week, I had occasion to recall the first time I visited New York, back in the unsanitised, pre-Giuliani days. Unceremoniously ejected from my Yellow Cab for not giving a big enough tip, somewhere Downtown, I was instantly struck by what felt like an image of the future: here was a foreign country, an English-speaking environment... but not quite Britain as I knew it. Everything seemed a little more sleazy, a little more anarchic, a little more dog-eat-dog. That Huxleyesque sense of things being almost familiar, yet not quite right, returned whilst I was wandering about Notlob, and found myself sheltering from the grim outdoors in the confines of an only slightly less grim Aldi store. Feeling a bit like Alice after eating those pesky mushrooms, I wondered at aisles packed with brands I almost - but not quite - recognised. Instead of Pot Noodles were Snack Noodles, instead of Red Bull there was Red Thunder, instead of Jaffa Cakes there were... well... Jaffa Cakes... but with no trace of McVities. In fact a whole store peddling minor hallucinations. A short while later, having escaped to the familiar comfort and sparkle of Asda, I was able to speculate upon the success (or otherwise) of a strategy based upon selling copycat brands. My conclusion was that I don't think this would work among the willing. Sure, if budgets are stretched to their limits, or you're from overseas and have never heard of Heinz, then you might accept this offering without too many questions. But the average Brit, brought up on a diet of ITV and the Andrex Puppy? I can't see it. Tertiary brands died off here long ago (once, back in the mists of time, I even had an advertising budget for Delsey Toilet Rolls - a Blue Peter Pencil if you can remember them!). Imagine my surprise then, to read in today's Observer that Tesco is getting a panning for the failure of its tertiary brand range, launched to compete with Aldi, and which isn't cutting the mustard as far as sales are concerned. My surprise is merely at the coincidence - surely the average Tesco customer belongs to neither customer category that I've just mentioned?
