Award-winning creative brand experience agency, N2O, is set to captivate shoppers this Halloween with the Trail to Treats touring roadshow, born from the retailer’s new Halloween toolkit.

This engaging event will reach selected Tesco stores nationwide, designed as a way to bring the toolkit’s spooky characters to life with Tesco shoppers. Kicking off the retail experience, visitors can sample products from an array of specially selected brands, including Mr Kipling, Monster Munch, Jammy Dodgers, Party Rings, Chupa Chups, Maryland Cookies, Accolade Wines and Diablo Wine.

Customers are then be invited to hunt for the characters within the aisles, using clues to find letters that spell out a mystery word. To add to the attraction, a fun photo opportunity will feature in the foyer, where shoppers can capture a memorable moment with one of the spooky characters featured on the trail.

Steve Frith, Art Director at N2O, said: “Halloween is an increasingly popular seasonal moment in consumers’ calendars, so we wanted to encourage customer engagement with a bit of theatre and entertainment, bringing Tesco’s Halloween toolkit to life like never before. With a whole host of spooky new characters to play with, we wanted to introduce them to customers in an interactive and memorable way, weaving them through a retail experience. The activity is set to entertain and inspire; from the sampling of treats and the fun of the trail, to a themed prize and promoted supplier offerings.”

The Trail to Treats is live from 5^th to 31^st October. Locate your nearest activity at: Tesco House of Halloween (tescohalloween.com)

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To bring some fun to the Christmas food shop, supermarket chain Iceland has trialled a new concept – Shopping on Ice.

A world first, supermarket aisles in Iceland’s Stratford branch were transformed to ice. A team of 12 ice rink experts worked through the night, refitting the entire store with 250 square meters of synthetic ice to complete the spectacular transformation.

Having been named the UK’s top supermarket for customer satisfaction numerous times, the brand-new experience aimed to bring some fun to what is often seen as just another festive chore – the Christmas food shop. The rink was installed in response to new research, commissioned by Iceland, which found that four in five parents (83%) wish they had more time to enjoy the run up to the big day.

A locker room area was installed where shoppers were invited to swap their footwear for skates, meaning  they could glide through the aisles as they picked up their essentials ready for Christmas.

With nine in 10 children (89%) finding the Christmas food shop boring, Iceland added some extra fun to the experience with penguin aids to help them skate along between the freezers and shelves.

The in-store skating trial passed the test of two professional skaters who took to the ice delighting shoppers with a performance.

Neil Hayes, Marketing Director at Iceland says: “At Iceland we know Christmas is and exciting time, however it can be a struggle for lots of families as there’s so much to do.  We wanted to add some magic to Christmas food shopping and the in store skating experience has certainly done that.”

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Sainsbury’s is today lighting up the town of Bude as its unusual supermarket tourist attraction gets a festive makeover just in time for Christmas. The famous car park tunnel is set to become a ‘light up spectacular’, with a guest appearance from Sainsbury’s very own Christmas icon, ‘Plug Boy’, to celebrate the switch on of thousands of LED lights spanning the full length of the tunnel.

The Cornish coastal resort’s unlikely tourist attraction has been the talk of the town, with hundreds of visitors leaving reviews online, rating the tunnel as Bude’s number one tourist destination earlier this year. Upon hearing about a local Christmas initiative called ‘Light up Bude’ – a fundraising effort by the community to put Christmas lights in Bude’s public spaces – Sainsbury’s has stepped in to give the town a festive surprise.

With the support of a number of local schools and companies, the switch on of Bude Tunnel will depict a series of festive colours and changing interactive light displays, accompanied by festive music sung by a local school choir. Visitors will also be able to share their experience via a winter themed photo wall.

Stephen Gent, store manager at Sainsbury’s Bude comments: “We’ve been overwhelmed with the positive response for the Bude Tunnel and we’re delighted to be working with the community to give it all we’ve got and bring the people of Bude something magical this Christmas. It’ll be a shopping trip they’ll never forget.”

The Bude tunnel will be lit up from Friday 7 December, until Thursday 13 December and will still operate as the main thoroughfare between Sainsbury’s Bude and the store car park.

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Asda has announced it’s now trialling in four stores its first pizza-delivery service in partnership with Just Eat, a leading global marketplace for online food delivery.

The delivery service which has already been trialled for nearly a month in Killingbeck in Leeds delivers within approximately a two-mile radius of the store. Customers can now order a selection of pizzas from the Asda Kitchen, in-store Diner priced at just £6 for a 16” pizza.

An extension of the trial is now being rolled out to three other stores in Beeston, Wakefield in West Yorkshire and Livingston, Scotland and will start from 19th November 2018.

Orders are placed online via the Just Eat food app and it then goes directly to the Asda store, freshly cooked in the in store diner and then delivered directly to your door.

The pizzas which are extra-large at 16” come in a variety of flavours including Margherita, American Sizzler, Pepperoni, Vegetable Supreme. There is also a special £15 meal deal that includes any pizza, 4 sides, 1 drink, dessert & dip.

The delivery service is available from the Asda Kitchen from lunchtime onwards, however, customers can also buy the pizza’s from the diner in store to choose to eat in or take away.

James Ainger, Asda’s Senior Buying Manager, said: “We are really excited to be trialling this new service in our store in Killingbeck, along with plans to roll out to three more stores later this month. We know our customers love Asda pizzas and now they can have them delivered to their doorstep.”

Asda and Just Eat said that if the trial is successful they will look to continue the rollout to more stores.

A Just Eat spokesperson added: “We have partnered with Asda on a localised trial for takeaway delivery in Leeds. This is part of our mission to offer customers the widest choice possible and we will continue to assess the results to determine whether we can expand our partnership further.”

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Tim Eales of IRI looks at the implications of the massive fall in the number of price promotions in retailers

Increasing pressure on UK retailers to be more transparent in their pricing has seen pure price-based promotional activity drop to its lowest level for around a decade. For the retailers and suppliers involved in managing the fallout of these reduced levels of price promotions, the challenges are great.

For consumers who have become used to taking advantage of the numerous multibuys, BOGOFs and other special offers in store during their regular shop, the fact that there’s been a significant reduction in the number of items on discount in store might come as a bit of shock.

When it comes to price promotions, the most recent change we have seen in the industry is the direction encouraged by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) back in 2012 when it set out its guidelines around the idea of pricing transparency. Since the demise of the OFT, many of its responsibilities have been taken over by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), including issues of pricing and how prices are communicated to consumers.

Back in 2012, the OFT raised concerns about prices being artificially inflated to make later discounts look more attractive, and stated that products should not be on promotion for longer than they are off promotion. This actually led to concerns by some retailers at the time that it would increase incidents of ‘yo-yo pricing’ rather than make it more transparent.

We’ve also seen pressures coming from other quarters, including increased competition from the main discounters, Aldi and Lidl, who have made it their mission to create a much more simplified approach to pricing than the major multiples, offering a limited range but at attractive low prices.

As a result, they have rapidly grown market share in the UK, forcing the supermarkets to rethink their strategy on ‘everyday low prices’, rather than simply relying on discounts and special offers to get shoppers through the doors.

According to a recent study by IRI on Price and Promotion (launched in August 2017), there was a 25% reduction in the number of items on discount since November 2012 (when the OFT guidelines were announced), with the proportion of items on price promotion as a percentage of all items stocked falling from 37% to 29%. The effect, it seems, is more pronounced in food categories.

During 2017, trade promotion levels were lower than they have for almost 10 years, while deal depth has been falling since early 2016. Shoppers effectively lost £3.7bn worth of offers.

This represents an 18% reduction in the overall benefit that price-based promotional offers have previously provided, although it has been offset to some extent by everyday (off-promotion) prices having been held lower than they would have been, or even going down in some cases.

For retailers and manufacturers, we are already seeing them pulling back from trade promotions, preferring to put emphasis on communicating the brand benefits rather than on consumer price promotions.

There is now increased competition for promotional slots and for off-shelf displays in stores, so in this climate of greater price transparency, it’s clear that brand owners need to know which categories are performing well and which aren’t, which deserve the highest levels of promotional support, and, most important, what effect different promotional strategies are having on different products.

The challenge of price promotions is not an easy one. It’s generally accepted that promoting products on price alone can drive short-term sales, but also eat into profit margins. Once the cost of discounts, displays and in-store marketing materials are taken into consideration, the positive effects reduce or even cease altogether.

However, there are other benefits, over and above driving short-term sales, including driving trial and penetration for both the retailer and brand, generating footfall for retailers, maintaining premium value positioning, and also augmenting the benefits of advertising, where this can be proven.

So, when prioritising promotional choices, retailers must look for categories where the effects from price promotions on the products promoted also result in a volume benefit for the category as a whole, delivering a win-win for both retailer and supplier.

Tim Eales is Strategic Insight Director of IRI, is a leading provider of big data, predictive analytics and forward-looking insights for FMCG, OTC health care, retailers and media companies.

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Breakfast cereal brand Weetabix is running a free fruit on-pack promotion to help people start 2018 in a healthy way.

The ‘£5-off’ fruit promotion runs from the start of January until March 28^th and will be supported with the brand’s “Have You Had Yours” TV commercial, being screened throughout January.

Weetabix has teamed up with Nisa on Weetabix 24-packs and with the Co-op and major supermarkets on 48- and 72-packs. The promotion is not running in Aldi and Lidl.

Customers who buy promotional packs during the campaign period will be able to claim 10 downloadable coupons, worth a total of £5 (€5 in the Republic of Ireland) off fruit, by going to the www.weetabix.co.uk/fruit promotional microsite and submitting the eight-digit alphanumeric Unique Reference Number (URN) printed on the inside of their promotional pack. They will also be asked to answer a multiple-choice survey question and say which retailer they bought the promotional Weetabix pack at.

The offer is open to residents of the United Kingdom (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), Channel Islands, Isle of Man and Republic of Ireland.

The 10 coupons each have a different validity date, discount value, redeemable fruit type and unique barcode. The first coupon from the 10 received will be valid for redemption within seven days from the date that the participant downloads the discount coupons online. All the other coupons then have a specific seven-day redemption period covering the following nine weeks.

The coupons can be redeemed at participating stores, allowing customers to buy a different pack of fruit each week. Coupons will specify the discount value, the redemption validity date, the type of fruit the discount applies to, and the minimum fruit weight or minimum quantity required to purchase (for example, minimum 600g or 5-pack of bananas). The fruit the coupons can be redeemed against are pears, apples, bananas, strawberries, kiwis, blueberries, clementines, grapes, melons and raspberries, in that order.

Charlotte Hunt, senior brand manager for Weetabix, says: “Health benefits is one of the fastest-growing attributes that customers look for when choosing breakfast cereals. Our new ‘£5 off fruit’ campaign will help to further cement Weetabix as the natural choice for those looking for a healthier way to start the day. Value for money is also very important to customers and we’re really proud to offer added value with the coupons.”

Hunt adds: “Amongst a backdrop of declining sales within the cereal sector, we’ve grown 3% this year and are by a long way the nation’s favourite breakfast cereal. Last year’s ‘Weetabuddies’ campaign delivered a 14% year-on-year increase in Weetabix sales and our latest promotion will continue to inspire a new generation of cereal eaters and encourage a healthy breakfast culture for the whole family.”

Customers who do not redeem the coupons by March 28^th will still be able to enter a prize draw to win £500 towards a healthy year at www.weetabix.co.uk/fruit. The draw will be open to enter from March 29^th  to  June 30^th 2018.

The Weetabix brand is now owned by American company Post Holdings, which bought the company for £1.4 billion in July 2017 from Bright Food, a state-owned Chinese company.

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Discount supermarket Aldi has brought back the star of last year’s Christmas advertising campaign, Kevin the Carrot, and given him a love interest Katie, with proceeds from plush Kevin and Katie toys sold in store going to charity Teenage Cancer Trust.

Picking up from where last year’s campaign ended, Aldi’s new advert opens with Kevin as a snowman’s nose, before being dislodged by the rumbling of an approaching train. Jumping aboard, Kevin discovers this isn’t just any train, but a luxurious sleeper complete with a dining car brimming with Aldi’s amazing Christmas feast.

In the distance Kevin spots Katie, and it’s love at first sight. But he has to brave flying Champagne corks, cheese towers and giant turkeys to reach her. This year’s ad has suspense, murder, romance and sumptuous food and drink in a setting reminiscent of classic films.

Adam Zavalis, Marketing Director at Aldi UK, says: “We launched Kevin last year with the line, heroes are grown, not born. And Kevin really did grow into our hero. Our customers took him to their hearts and enjoyed watching his escapades in the run up to Christmas. We just had to bring him back again this year.”

Oscar winning actor Jim Broadbent also returns to narrate the story, backed by the Edward Scissorhands soundtrack.

Kevin and Katie will also be the stars of 14 product oriented sub-campaigns running as 20 and 30 second TV executions as well as being delivered across digital, social, outdoor, press, cinema, radio, door drop and in-store.

Plush Kevin The Carrot and Katie The Carrot soft toys be launching in stores from November 23rd for £2.99, in support of Aldi’s charity partner, Teenage Cancer Trust.

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We’ve heard it all before – but, as we enter one of the most uncertain economic periods in recent history, rewarding customers for loyalty really is now more important than ever, says Chris Baldwin of Sodexo. PROMOTIONAL FEATURE

A loyal customer is more profitable and their value cannot be overstated; and, with so many new technologies becoming mainstream in 2016, there is a great foundation to build on and refine in 2017 when honing a strategy for loyalty.

Here are the five top loyalty trends of 2016 that should shape your strategy in 2017.

Personalisation

With 65% of marketers seeing loyalty schemes as an essential part of the marketing mix, retaining customers is imperative – and personalisation has a key part to play in keeping shoppers loyal.

Tesco have been doing it for years; you buy something in store and you’re offered Clubcard points on similar products.

As a more tech savvy generation takes over, this has evolved to include cookies and suggested ‘items to buy’ following internet shopping.

Brands need to take a leaf out of the retail playbook and take personalisation on board, making it a huge part of what they offer their consumers. Whether this is through a points system or through preferential treatment via a membership scheme or loyalty platform, it is important to remember that adding specific value to an offer makes it infinitely more attractive.

Be technologically advanced

These days, offering a coupon on promotional packaging is just one of the ways to offer consumers added value. Technology means there are now so many other avenues available to get in front of consumers.

Much of the new technology available to be used in promotions can be delivered via an app or smartphone camera, and that means that the speed at which redemption can be achieved is extraordinary.

Brands can deploy coupon and barcode scanning apps, which can recognise scanned receipts or QR codes displayed on restaurant tables offering instant-win prizes, or sophisticated 3D object recognition software which identifies products within the real world space and can then offer real-time sales promotions.

Travel experiences

Walk through any supermarket and you’ll find promotions offering luxury getaways and chances to win ‘once in a lifetime experiences’ on the shelves. With 75% of people saying they would be interested in entering a travel promotion, this trend looks set to continue. The idea of an experience as a reward isn’t new; in fact, research shows that Millennials prefer this type of reward over cash bonuses, so it is important the B2C market tap into this to reward loyal customers.

Travel is easier than ever before, and short city breaks can also hold appeal when it comes to rewarding loyalty. A price-sensitive choice becomes far less clear-cut when, for example, there is the option to renew your current insurance and potentially win a city break versus having to research a new provider for a minimal saving.

Instant rewards

Although we may have found them annoying at some point, no one can deny the effectiveness of text alerts from your favourite stores or push notifications direct to your mobile offering limited time discounts or exclusive prizes.

With Millennials coming into their own in the consumer market, the time is ripe for instant rewards. The Millennial generation question the traditional ways of doing things and are more willing to research for themselves. So for them, a push notification reminding them that their insurance is due for renewal, but with the added value of a downloadable £20 e-voucher is a very attractive prospect.

The gratification offered by an instant tangible reward helps to inspire loyalty in a generation often seen as frivolous. Marketers know that Millennials tend to have less loyalty to brands and will often chop and change to get the best deals, rewards and benefits. Therefore, it is important that rewards are not only personalised, but also readily and instantly available without the need for additional communications.

Retention is the new buzzword

On average it costs a business 5 to 10 times more to acquire a customer than it does to sell to an existing one and just a 5% increase in customer retention can lead to 25%-100% increase in profit. Current customers spend roughly 67% more than new customers so it pays to appeal to this demographic.

The autosave password function means that customers can return again and again to their favourite retailers making it prime space to host promotions rewarding loyal customers.

By encouraging customers to log in via a specific portal with enticing discounts and rewards for doing so, brands and businesses can reinforce brand recognition and loyalty simply by being convenient and offering added value. There is a great opportunity to create brand association every time they use the portal. For example, offering additional discounts on further products in the range or in partnership with other brands makes the reward not only more attractive but also more memorable.

The 21st century is fast paced, with older technology making way for the new, and a younger and savvier generation holding the purse strings. It’s more important now than ever before to keep rewards attractive for loyal customers. ‘Instantancy’ – the demand for instant rewards – and convenience are key aspects that will only become more prevalent going forward as we rely more and more on technology in our day to day lives.

The ways in which we access and interact with traditional consumer promotions continues to evolve at an alarming rate. However, with great change often comes great opportunity and the promotional marketing arena is no exception to this rule. In 20 years’ time, we may look back and regard this as the age of digital experimentation; but whilst there is so much new ground to cover, the chances for creative and exciting ways to interact with customers are yet to be fully explored.

Chris Baldwin is Director of Consumer Programs at Sodexo. The Sodexo family, which includes the Promorati brands Protravel, Filmology, Fotorama and Entice, is Headline Sponsor of The IPM Awards 2017.

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Supermarket loyalty is decreasing, according to the latest research from Valassis: only 12% of shoppers claim loyalty to just one supermarket brand, with most (70%) shopping across two to three different stores. The number of shoppers loyal to just one supermarket has nearly halved since 2014, when it was 22%.

The figures, from a consumer survey carried out in November for Valassis, the UK’s largest coupon and voucher services provider, reveal that there is even less loyalty during the festive season, particularly among female shoppers. Only 10% of women stating they would stay loyal to their main regular supermarket.

Promotional offers are the deciding factor behind where the Christmas supermarket shop is done, with half of all women surveyed declaring they would switch supermarkets in order to use coupons or vouchers, although only one third of men say they are persuaded by such deals.

The research highlighted a number of other changing trends relating to promotional mechanics.  Coupons and vouchers are now favoured by 42% of shoppers compared to 38% three years ago; and loyalty points are favoured by 43% of Tesco and Sainsbury’s shoppers, compared to 38% in 2013.

In today’s increasingly digital age, paper coupons are still a favourite with most shoppers, although younger shoppers are more likely to embrace technological advances – nearly half of 25-34 year olds (48%) are highly likely to use a mobile coupon.

“With the consumer’s head being turned every which way by promotions at Christmas and grocery loyalty being at a low, no supermarket can afford to sit on the side-lines, especially when targeting women shoppers.” Valassis’ Managing Director, Charles D’Oyly (pictured), says.  “Within the grocery sector, digital promotions are still far from being embraced by the consumer although younger shoppers are certainly more predisposed to use them.  Clearly, offering a choice of promotional formats is currently the way to go.”

The weekly shop remains a firm habit of the majority of shoppers (58%), although a third of shoppers (33%) undertake daily top ups and 21% regularly opt for online shopping and home delivery.

The findings are based on an online survey of 2,000 nationally representative adults, conducted by GfK NOP on behalf of Valassis between 4^th and 7th November 2016.

Valassis Limited is the UK’s largest coupon and voucher services provider performing crucial data management and financial clearing services and responsible for handling most of the UK’s coupons and vouchers.

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