REAL VALUE FOR MONEY NEEDS REAL CREATIVITY BELOW THE LINE, ARGUES PHIL PAWSEY, CREATIVE DIRECTOR OF WAX COMMUNICATIONS
Wander down any high street and you’ll see the promotional noise has grown toa deafening din in the past year or so.
Price promotions are popular at the best of times, and especially so in a recession.
Not only do they appeal to budget conscious shoppers – even the affluent are elbow-in the bargain bins, according to recent reports- but marketing directors like them for their accountability and tactical impact.
Retailers, who want to outsell the merchant up the road, have been passionate in their demand for them to hook in customers.
But are consumers starting to suffer from ‘discount fatigue’?
While a money-saving deal will always catch the eye, it’s been proved that when times are tough people are inclined to turn to the warmth and reassuring nature of established brands.
Brands like these tend to want to protect their brand equity.
Discounts can harm brands
Deep discounts can cause the consumer to believe that something is ‘wrong’.
Frequent discounting serves to lower the value of the brand because of an almost subconscious consumer reaction – they believe that quality has also been lowered.
Or, in a ‘value rebound’, as identified by US based branding experts Killian and Company, consumers begin to perceive the usual, non-discounted price as too high.
It’s often debated whether Stella Artois’‘Reassuringly Expensive’ above the line premium positioning was damaged by constant price promotions below the line. It was confusing for consumers, to say the least.
A recession doesn’t mean all brand communications should be about price.
It’s arguably even more important that brands build a distinct personality and image in tough times than in better days, because they need to achieve stand out.
With people looking for better value, having a genuine reason other than price to choose one product over another is all the more important.
Above the line agencies talk a lot about the fact that brands which continue advertising through a recession come out of it the strongest. Recent research by Oregon State University and Western Oregon University showed that advertising expenditures contributed to increased earnings by firms for up to three years following; the greatest impact occurring in the year immediately following a recession.
So building brands, both above and below the line, during a recession ensures that when the good times return, the strongest brands reap those benefits.
The good news is building brands and driving sales is not such a stark choice these days. With creative thought and proper insight, sales promotion can do both.
Take our latest work for United Biscuits, which extended the above the line campaign in a neat sales promotion in
this way.
Our integrated campaign for Hula Hoops was born out of the insight that people love to play with the hoops, usually sticking them on their fingers. So building on from the great ads that Publicis delivered, we created a campaign inviting consumers to make ‘Finger Films’ and win trips to ‘Hulawood USA’.
A strong promotional call to action can use insight to support and build brand equity.
Another UB through the line campaign we worked on asks the nation which McVitie’s biscuits they love the most. Yes, there’s a chance to win cash daily, but the central insight – that we Brits are obsessively passionate about biscuits – drives the campaign, placing McVitie’s at the heart of that obsession and building the brand in the process.
Creativity can shine below the line; and so it should,
now that the public is inured to the ‘half price’ message.
Creativity cuts through
Creativity can shine below the line; and so it should, now that the public is inured to the ‘half price’ message and deals are a given.
And, as the recession rolls on, we should remember consumers have been bombarded with ‘money-off’ messaging, 24/7, online andoff, in the home and on the high street for a while now. There must come a time when they not only switch off, but actively ‘tune out’.
With this in mind, I would go as far as to say that creativity counts for even more in a recession. What else is there to engage customers when price no longer cuts it?
A good strategic and creative idea sometimes (but not always!) costs no more than a run of the mill one, and offers greater ROI.
Creativity also delivers more than sales volume spikes, if planned with the bigger picture in mind.
The promotional hit of early summer – the Walker’s ‘Do Us a Flavour’ campaign – is an example par excellence.
According to Walkers, the idea came out of a brainstorming session involving Walkers marketers, ad agency AMV:BBDO, PR consultancy Freud, below-the-line agency The Big Kick and Paul Weiland, the man who directs the brand’s TV ads.
The bold central idea was to tap into the ‘user-generated’ phenomenon. By letting the public take ‘control’ of the new flavour, like other brands riding the wave of customer interaction, Walker’s was able to ‘stand back’ and let the public do the edginess. But while the creativity came ‘from the street,’ the professional feel was maintained through the campaign’s slick execution, featuring wellcrafted multimedia content.
‘Do us a flavour’ was an innovative, engaging and strategic promotion and a world away from the tactical, template variety of discount SP.
Of course the two are not directly comparable, but if both are measured against their bottom line, which offers the best return?
It’s true the Walker’s campaign gave a pretty hefty incentive to enter; not just the chance of winning a £50,000 prize but also a 1% share of future royalties. But the results are sensational.
Walkers received more than 1.1m entries, four times as many as it had hoped, and at its peak in August, the website had 102,000 web sessions per day.
Walkers had the mettle to do something different – and with every success comes a wave of ‘me too’ promotions.
Among them is Dorito’s digitally-heavy ‘Guess Which Flavour’ campaign, which invites users to guess its mystery flavour.
All very well, but is copycat marketing, even if it does mirror a highly creative campaign, a good idea?
Brands may think so, if the number of times I am asked to create a hybrid campaign ‘a bit like promotion ‘X’ but with a bit of promotion ‘Y’ thrown in’ is anything to go by.
SP is one of the few marketing industry good news stories to come out of the economic down turn; the January Bellwether report showed sales promotion now accounts for 9.2% of overall spend, compared to Main Media (30.3%), Direct Marketing (24.9%) and ‘all other’ (25.7%), a considerable rise on previous reports.
But SP is not just big news in a recession. With creativity and insight, it can be the marketing method of choice for all seasons.
Beyond the brief
Pushing the boundaries and delivering new creative spins, even if the brief appears to require an obvious solution or a re-hash of something that’s already been done, will give SP a shelf life beyond the recession.
Consumers don’t settle for second best – why should we?
The activity, called ‘Bonkers about Biscuits’ asks biscuit lovers to vote for their favourite Mcvitie’s biscuit for their chance to instantly win a share of £5,000 every day.
The 8-week instant-win on pack promotion starts on August 17. Consumers enter their pack details online at 
The Bonkers About Biscuits campaign created by Wax Communications for McVitie’s is covered by Creative Match.
Sean Watkins, Client Services Director has 
