June 18, 2012
The Age
WOOLWORTHS has recorded its strongest market share gains in nearly three years and will introduce a new advertising campaign, replete with a fresh slogan for the supermarket and an appearance on TV talent show The Voice, as it prepares to lock horns with Coles and blunt its rival’s recent success.
A new advertising campaign that hit television last night places a greater spotlight on Woolworths’ relationship with farmers and suppliers as well as attempting to reinforce the message that a great proportion of its food is Australian made.
The nation’s biggest supermarket group has also revised its famous 25-year-old ”The Fresh Food People” slogan and instead opted for ”Australia’s Fresh Food People” to counter confusion among some shoppers that the company was foreign owned.
Woolworths director of supermarkets Tjeerd Jegen told BusinessDay that recent industry data showed the supermarket group had ”healthy” market share numbers at the moment with both year-on- year growth and quarter-to-quarter growth heading higher.
”We have not grown on both [metrics] … for a long time,” Mr Jegen said.
”We have registered the strongest growth in both quarter-on-quarter and year on year over the last 2½ years.”
Mr Jegen said over the past three months Woolworths had recorded the best numbers against its main rival, Coles, and new player, discount supermarket group Aldi.
As the turnaround of Coles has gathered pace the smaller supermarket chain has outperformed its much larger competitor Woolworths for 11 consecutive quarters, although in the most recent March quarter both chains suffered from food deflation and a pullback in spending by shoppers.
Critics of Woolworths have accused the group of being too reactive to Coles as the two fight it out for customers, and have pushed the company to be more innovative and proactive when it comes to winning back shoppers who have strayed over to Coles.
Mr Jegen, an outsider from British chain Tesco who took the reins of the supermarkets before Christmas, said one of the first things he noticed at Woolworths was that it was too focused on what its competitors were doing.
”I think competition is a great driver of change but not the best driver of change because we are in business to serve our customers. So, the main focus I have put on the business is to really start listening to our customers and becoming customer obsessed.”
Flowing from hours of focus groups and customer feedback, that new proactive approach will be seen in Woolworths’ new advertising campaign, which will showcase its staff and supplier partners such as farmers and truck drivers.
The new slogan ”Australia’s Fresh Food People” will also remind customers that the company is proudly Australian owned and that a majority of its produce is made or grown here, including its private label portfolio.
The campaign will also feature a segment on the popular TV show, The Voice, in which a singer will perform a song from the Woolworths ad.
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