Our Thoughts On Lidl’s Rebranding
Discount supermarket chain Lidl is rebranding – but not in the way that you would expect. Rather than changing the look of its logo or brand colours, the company is giving its brand message a makeover. The new £20 million campaign from Lidl aims to shift the focus from the store’s low prices to the quality of its products.
Lidl is not often referred to as a brand that offers high-quality produce and luxury brand items. It is the store that you go to when you want to save a bit of money. So, it will take a lot of work to rebrand Lidl’s identity.
Publicity Stunt: Pop-Up Shop
Last weekend, Lidl hosted a pop-up market in Allen Gardens. The store’s fruits, vegetables, meat and baked goods were put on sale as though they were being sold in a farmer’s market. Camera crews were on the scene to capture the reactions of visitors as they were wowed by the low prices and the quality of the food.
This is not a publicity stunt in the conventional meaning of the term, but it has used a unique format to garner a great deal of press for Lidl. Farmer’s market shoppers are frequented by a consumer group that are likely to dismiss Lidl’s products as cheap and low-quality. By appealing to this group, Lidl has demonstrated that the quality of its products can compete with companies like Waitrose and Sainsbury’s – while offering much lower prices.
Television Ad
The footage from the farmer’s market was used to create an advertisement for the brand. It shows shoppers sampling produce from the market and remarking on the great quality. After making their purchases – and being surprised at the low cost – they are told that the items came from Lidl.
The advert takes a more organic approach to marketing, as it does not make reference to a specific product or price point. It is a departure from previous Lidl ads that were more comedic and very product-heavy. Created by TBWA\London, the ad has a high production value that would be expected from a more up-market brand.
Rebranding can help you reinvent your company or product to give it new life and appeal to a new group of consumers. Win Marketing can help you reinvent your brand. For more information, visit our Branding page or call us at +44(0)1509 265890.
15 Years of Change
This year, Win Marketing celebrates 15 great years. To mark the occasion, we’re counting down fifteen things that have changed in the marketing world – one a week for every year that we’ve been in business.
Communications
When Win Marketing first got started, communication was carried out primarily over the post. The working day was scheduled around ‘first post’ and ‘second post’, as marketers’ deadlines were based on mail collection. Invoices, proofs and many other types of correspondence were sent out via post .
Today, all correspondence is carried out over email. While hard copies are sent through the post as backup documents, email is the preferred method of communication between clients and marketers today.
Terminology
During the last 15 years, plenty of new terms have found their way into the vocabulary of marketing professionals. In 1999, you would never have heard the word ‘Google’ used as a verb. ‘Tablets’ were pills; not computers. Twitter wasn’t around, so ‘tweeting’ was something that was only done by birds. The marketing landscape has changed significantly, and the introduction of so many new terms reflects the ever-developing nature of the industry.
Direct Mail
15 years ago, direct mail was one of the most effective forms of marketing and advertising. It helped brands reach out to local consumers to create brand awareness and market upcoming promotions. Today, e-shots have replaced mail as the go-to direct form of marketing, while mailers and leaflets tend to go straight into the recycling bin. In an increasingly digital market, consumers are more likely to respond to direct messages that they can access online. Direct marketing is also quite popular via text message, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter provide brands with direct access to communication with consumers.
Win Marketing’s Branding Story
Every company needs to have a brand strategy that is reflective of their identity and mission to help set them apart from the competition. When Ann started Win Marketing 15 years ago, she gave careful consideration to the name and logo to ensure that the physical branding would reflect her company’s mission of using marketing to help clients build winning businesses.
The Name
Starting out, the original name was ‘Goodwin Strategic Marketers’. The name was not quite catchy enough, and it only really applied when Ann was by herself. As the company expanded, she wanted a name that would represent the team she was developing and the direction that they were headed in.
She shortened down her surname into the shorter and more memorable ‘Win Marketing’. It also represented her positive approach to marketing that helps her clients ‘win’. As a dedicated fan of sport, the notion of winning has always been important to Ann. She has applied it to the mission of Win Marketing, helping her clients creating winning businesses through marketing.
“To be successful in marketing means a genuine win:win scenario for our clients, their customers and ourselves,” Ann says. “If our clients and their customers are happy then obviously we will win in the long run as well”.
The Logo
In the Win Marketing logo, the brand is symbolised by an arrow. This is meant to represent Porter’s Marketing Triangle, which emphasises the importance of having a focused marketing strategy. As such, the arrow in our logo represents Win Marketing’s goal of ensuring that clients are focused and going in the right direction when meeting their objectives.
The logo was developed with lowercase letters to make it easier to read. It also allowed for a strong and simple ‘WIN’ to be placed alongside the word ‘Marketing’.
The Colours
Win Marketing’s trademark purple colour scheme was borne of Ann’s desire to do something different. She recognised that many businesses use red and blue as their corporate colours, and she wanted something unique that was also strong and creative.
Ann was used to seeing a lot of purple in her everyday life, since it was her daughter’s favourite colour. She felt that purple made a statement, helping Win Marketing to stand out from the crowd.
Just like we have done with our own brand, Win Marketing can help you develop a successful brand strategy for your company. For more information, view our Branding page or give us a call at: 01509 265 890.
Perfect Viral Marketing from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge
One of the most successful marketing campaigns that we have seen in recent years is the ice bucket challenge for ALS, a devastating neurodegenerative disease. Thanks to the challenge, more than £60 million has been raised for ALS research and patient services – £50 million more than the total raised last year. So, what has made the ALS ice bucket such a success?
Fun and Easy
There isn’t much that you need to do in order to take part in the ice bucket challenge. You pour a bucket of ice water over your head, donate £10 and nominate three friends to do the same. If you don’t participate in the challenge, then you must donate £100. The results are always hilarious because – who doesn’t want to see their friends doused in ice-cold water? It makes for perfect sharing material.
Sense of Urgency
When you nominate a person to do the ice bucket challenge, you give a 24-hour deadline. If your friend does not comply, then they have to donate £100. We’re not sure where the rules came from, but there are in place to create a sense of urgency and get people donating and sharing. Without the deadline, there would likely be fewer ice bucket videos out there.
Participants Feel Good
There’s nothing quite like feeling a sense of accomplishment, and that’s exactly what the ice bucket challenge provides. Participants can feel like they’ve made a difference for a great cause. They can also identify with high-profile celebrities like David Beckham, Bill Gates and even Homer Simpson. It creates a sense of unity over a good cause.
The Beckham Family’s ALS Ice Bucket Challenge:
Compared to Other Viral Campaigns
You can really see exactly why the ice bucket challenge has become so successful simply by looking at other viral marketing campaigns. We all remember the infamous Kony 2012 campaign, which was everything that the ice bucket challenge is not:
It was expensive, requiring participants to spend £20 on a pack of posters. It was time consuming, as a 20-minute video explained the call to action and participants were called to on to spend the night covering their town with posters. There was little urgency, as over a month elapsed between the time the video was first posted and the time that participants were to ‘Cover the Night’. During that time, viewers found a number of discrepancies, including facts that had been distorted by the campaign and misleading information about where the fundraising money would be spent.
Win Marketing is pleased to support the ice bucket challenge and ALS. We’ve made our donation to the ALS Foundation, and you can do the same at: http://www.alsa.org/donate/.
Our thoughts on BBC Doctor Who’s series 8 launch campaign
In the Win offices, we have several favourite TV shows, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Attack on Titan, even EastEnders (shock horror). And Doctor Who is on that list for a couple of us on the team.
So as die hard Who fans, those people were always going to notice the marketing activity which the BBC has been working on – and well, we thought we would pop this into a blog post with our thoughts. So, without further ado – read on…
Allons-y! (A bit of Doctor Who geekery slipping out there – apologies!)
Analysis of Doctor Who’s 8th Series Marketing Campaign
Doctor Who is returning to televisions on 23 August for its 8th event, and we have to commend the marketing team behind Doctor Who’s campaign. Viral marketing and social media have gone a long way to getting viewers pumped for the new season.
Crashed TARDIS
Today, in Parliament Square in central London, you may see a crashed TARDIS (that’s The Doctor’s time and space machine for those who don’t know) just in front of Big Ben, along with the stars of the show, and a hiding dinosaur skull underneath.
Oh and what else – the date of the show and the TV channel it premieres on. Obviously.
This is not for filming purposes, but as a PR stunt, designed to get tongues wagging, tweets tweeting and blogs blogging. Buzzfeed have already picked up on it, and so have we!
‘Secret’ Teaser Trailer
Last week, the BBC released a thirty-second teaser trailer for the first episode of series 8, Deep Breath. Like any good teaser trailer, it features shots from exciting scenes to pique the interest of fans.
What is unique about this trailer is the way in which it was disseminated.
Being a ‘secret’, the BBC did not promote the video, leaving it up to fans to discover and share. Then, rather than making the video available through Dr Who’s official twitter account (@bbcdrwho), it was posted on the BBC’s own handle, and fans were encouraged to retweet it using the hashtag #DrWho.
Dr Who World Tour
The Dr Who World Tour kicked off on 7 August, as the show’s stars and creators set off on an international adventure to meet fans all over the globe. This is certainly the best kind of PR, as it psyches viewers up to watch the new season when it airs.
The fans that meet The Doctor – Peter Capaldi, his companion – Jenna Coleman and the shows current creator – Steven Moffat, are encouraged to share their photos using the tag #DWWORLDTOUR.
This further spreads the reach of the marketing campaign by targeting the friends of fans, who may not necessarily watch the show. It spreads the news that the latest season of Dr Who is coming out soon using the holy grail of marketing communications – word of mouth, in a digital form.
Why Hashtags?
By asking users to share videos and photos using #dwworldtour or #drwho tags, it makes the content much more accessible than tweeting @bbcdrwho.
Hashtags are now used on Facebook and other social media sites, so a wide range of internet users can communicate about a particular topic without having a Twitter account. Hashtags are also better at encouraging conversation, as they target a wide range of social media users who are keen on the same topic.
Viral marketing and social media are very effective ways to spread the word, and Win Marketing can get the digital world talking about your a new product or brand. For more information on how we can help, visit our Social Media Marketing page or give us a call at: +44(0)1509 265890.
