Media Campaign Of Woolworths Limited

Background of the Campaign

Discuss about the Media Campaign of Woolworths Limited.

Woolworths Limited has come a long way since its opening in 1924. There were a lot of ups and down in its way, but still, it has kept its place in the retail market as has become one of the leading retailers of grocery in Australia. The company has been targeting to supply fresh food to the consumers of Australia over the last twenty five years. The company includes an extensive product range of fresh vegetables, fruits, meat and dairy products, snacks, liquor, tobacco, canned products, cigarettes and many more things (Lewis and Reiley 2014). The leading brand has always given the consumers first priority and focused on improving their product range in order to satisfy the demands of the consumers.  The marketing strategy of Woolworths have mostly considered the active business environment and adopted the framework to meet the continuous change of consumer demand (Baker 2014). The business of the retail organization has entirely been driven by the consumers. The last media campaign ‘cheap cheap’, has been criticized by the international marketers and was labeled as down-market. Many have said it is a clear copy of long running campaign of Coles. Woolworths has launched their new campaign with the tagline ‘Always at Woolworths’, which might be a big brand push for the brand in the retail market.

The new campaign has replaced the previous tagline of the brand ‘cheap cheap’ with two cartoon mascots. The retail group has faced a lot of decline in the sales and profits in last few years and now has taken a complete review of their marketing strategies. The supermarkets in Australia have taken part in a price war, which put pressure on the margins. The increasing competition in the supermarket region from other renowned brands like Coles and Aldi has given Woolworths a challenge in the public relations and marketing area. At this situation, Woolworths needed a fresh new strategy to give a big push to the brand name, which relates to the friendly tone of voice. The simple, consumer focused and flexible tagline is expected to win many hearts in the marketing genre.

Any promotional campaign of the renowned brands plans a sequence of messages with special objectives to be delivered. The promotional campaign of Woolworths Limited has encompassed variety of promotion including public relations, advertizing, social media, print media, and various other promotional events (Solomon 2014). Woolworths have come up with a new tagline which as a more Aussie tone and be more close to heart of the regular consumers. The primary goals and objectives of the media campaign are,

Aims and Objectives of the Campaign

The primary goal of the campaign is to renew the brand value of Woolworths. In the past few years Woolworths have faced many ups and downs and the previous tagline had faced many criticisms as well (Arli et al. 2013). With the new catchy tagline the brand will try to get its dignity back in the marketing sphere.

The first priority of Woolworths has always been the customers. It has created the friendly tone and homely culture with the new media campaign. The main objective is to be successful in the print media and in the TV advertisements and reach the consumers easily.

Another objective behind the new media campaign is to lead in the optimized revenue margins. The goal is to drive the profits or cash flow. Woolworths have promoted the sales motivated promotional activities, which will help promoting the sales growth (Arli et al., 2013).

Defining the communication problem is the main objective of the media campaign. In the past few years Woolworths have lost its charm and the connection it ad with its consumers. The organization has planned to regain its place in the market. Woolworths has faced challenges in the sector, fresh food, where the organization has been the most leading group. Woolworths has two most significant competitors Coles and Aldi, who have captured a good share of market by this time. After the fresh campaign of Coles, Woolworths could not possibly stay shut and many more issues were in urgent need to be resolved. A common issue with Woolworths was that it had lacked leadership management and did not have fundamental marketing and promotional strategies to face the competitive market (Gupte and Doyle 2014). The previous ‘cheap cheap’ advertisement has been much criticized because of the flawed strategy. Researchers have stated that the advertisement had made the consumers conscious about the surrendering economic pressure. Critics have said that this tagline was nothing but just a copy paste of the tagline ‘down down’ by Coles. The view was defective and it failed to communicate with the consumers.

Woolworths have ruled the genre of fresh foods because it was the pioneer company in the Australian market to introduce a good quality fresh food on a regular basis. The primary stakeholders of Woolworths are widely spread in the country including employees, consumers, local and global suppliers, shareholders (individual and institutional), Government departments, Franchises and many more (Methner, Hamann and Nilsson 2015). Apart from all these, the retail company has stakeholders from retailers’ organization, customer goods council SA as a planned business. Other than that, Woolworths comprises of employee unions and collective staffs framework. Also, media, community organizations, NGOs, consumer pressure groups are amounted to Woolworths.

Statement of Communication Problems

The existing target market of Woolworths is mostly the high income groups in the standard living measure. The company is now planning to target the lower groups in the living standard measure and the black middle class groups in South Africa, because measuring the increasing income of those two sections the analysts have forecasted that they will buy clothes and food from the retail stores (Blenkhorn and Kosenko 2015). Woolworths is mainly targeting South Africa, as it has a good market potential and the market is mostly unexplored by the retail organizations (Bailey 2016). Woolworths has opened 637 stores in South Africa across all the nine provinces including urban areas and major cities. Through the new media campaign Woolworths is trying to reach as much customers as they can in the target market.

The new media campaign of Woolworths is planning to target few areas, which have caused a fall in their business for last few years. The company has been criticized for the media campaign and their tagline. Through the new tagline ‘Always at Woolworths’ will primarily focus to get back the customer trust with the clear and concise message.

• Woolworths has always been known for their consumer centric business. The organization is going to revive the trust by knowing the needs of their consumers so that they can be swift enough to provide those required things to their consumers (Devin and Richards 2016). The key message of the campaign will put stress on the ninety two year long service that Woolworths has provided to the consumers.
• Through this media campaign, the company is also trying to get hold of all the print and visual media in the food industry so that it can easily reach to all its potential consumers.

The primary objective of the media campaign of Woolworths is to reach more consumers at one time. In setting this very objective the organization will consider the overall strategies of the campaign. The company has targeted the social development and focused on the environmental requirements.  Through this campaign they want sustainable growth along with the societal development. Woolworth will focus on the major four areas which are very much significant for their business such as the consumers, the employees, the sustainable business journey and the operations (Rahman and Areni 2014). The strategies will center these four areas to renew the trustworthy bond with the consumers. All the departments of the retail company will have their specific objectives whereas the management will take care of the overall strategies.

Woolworths will target to retain a flexible pricing strategy and this will be conveyed to the customers through the media campaign. There will be a video promo shot basing on the new tagline ‘Always at Woolworths’ and that will focus on showing how Woolworths can maintain their product quality with flexible prices. The pricing strategy can also be conveyed through the print media as the newspapers, magazine ads will show the flexible pricing approach (Armstrong et al. 2014).

Woolworths will follow an energetic yet imaginative promotional plan with their new tagline. This will allow the company to directly focus on the target market while not spending too much dollars on the advertizing promotions. The promotional strategies will cover all the media such as print, digital, online and others to make the renewal of the tagline more prominent in front of the customers (Perrone and Wodonga 2015). The company may plan to hold a press release on the very day and before that a press release kit can be sent to all the major media houses in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, highlighting the new tagline and how Woolworths is planning to come back with a hit to the food industry. The kit will comprise of the pictures of the interior of the major outlets, colored flyers and business card. This can attract the print, digital and online media at the same time.

Stakeholder Analysis and Target Market

Other than that there will be individual promotions such as distributing colored flyers throughout the major cities and other areas, especially in the outlets of the partners of Woolworths. A mail program may be organized with the existing customer base of the company. This strategy can be very much useful for the remaining consumers of Woolworths and this may attract the media houses as well because of the innovative approach.

Social media has been a very important part of our daily life. The promotional strategies of Woolworths will also target the social media to reach to every possible consumer (Walker 2014). The social media is also a great way to strengthen the messages to the consumers and letting them know and share the products and offers of the company. There will be a team of social media managers who will ensure the social media promotions are happening in the right way.

Woolworths will target the smart marketing which can be challenging but will make a more efficient effort. The company will follow few tactics to make this campaign attract more media coverage as well.

• The organization needs to decide what the newsworthy events are. Media always focuses on the events where the story emerges. However the new tagline is supposed to give them a big story.
• Woolworths will need to develop the most targeted media list. It is important to know which media houses will be interested to cover the retail company. Then, the list of the reporters, their email addresses or phone numbers and other contact information can be developed.
• It is important to find good spokes people for the media houses who will represent the company in front of the media. The messenger can be the most important factor in the media coverage. The company should designate a team for the media marketing and other social media promotions. Moreover the public relations team needs to be strengthened.

There can be few limitations of the campaign because not every media house will be interested in promoting Woolworths. However, the past performance of the company will attract the media houses towards the campaign. Also the social media and other public relations strategy might be limited because most digitally savvy population is younger people (Shin and Lee 2015). The campaign should target all the age groups. Also, the campaign may cost a fortune to the company.

Conclusion

The media campaign of Woolworths will focus to attract more media coverage so that the new tagline is able to reach more consumers at one go. The business is targeted to be more customer-centric and good in operations. All the strategies will center in providing quality products in flexible prices and a good consumer service. The market development will also consider how the business will grow in the competitive business environment, so that the strategies can focus on the existing strengths of the company and develop more skills.

Reference List

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Bailey, M., 2016. Absorptive Capacity, International Business Knowledge Transfer, and Local Adaptation: Establishing Discount Department Stores in Australia. Australian Economic History Review.

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Blenkhorn, D.L. and Kosenko, R., 2015, May. Peter M. Banting. In Proceedings of the 1985 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference (p. 68). Springer.

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Gupte, J. and Doyle, J., 2014. Woolworths becomes a’health destination’. AJP: The Australian Journal of Pharmacy, 95(1125), p.4.

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Methner, N., Hamann, R. and Nilsson, W., 2015. The Evolution of a Sustainability Leader: The Development of Strategic and Boundary Spanning Organizational Innovation Capabilities in Woolworths. In The Business of Social and Environmental Innovation (pp. 87-104). Springer International Publishing.

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