Woolies new priced-based marketing campaign

To reinforce its $500 million dollar investment into lower grocery prices, Woolworths has launched a new price-based marketing campaign. The new campaign, "Always at Woolworths", will substitute the previous Cheap Cheap campaign. The integrated marketing campaign is said to run on a range of media, including print, online, television and radio, highlighting the everyday value in Woolworth’s supermarkets rather than one-off discounts.

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As a result of the new campaign, analysts have been impelled to question whether “Woolworths' new supermarkets team, led by Brad Banducci and Dave Chambers, is shifting towards an everyday-low-value pricing (EDLP) strategy rather than a high-low pricing model in an attempt to win back the trust of consumers.”

Based on other media releases, Woolworths is said to further invest more than $500 million dollars in reducing grocery prices in the aim of "neutralising" Coles and "containing" Aldi. So far the retail giant has invested more than $200 million into reducing prices this year, and claims its prices are now as cheap, if not slightly cheaper, than a similar basket of groceries at Coles.

Aimed at launching its new price position, the campaign called ‘’ The Always at Woolworths” was put together by Advertising agency Leo Burnett.

The Woolworths spokesman stated that the retail giant will always call out its value offer to their customers, and the new 'low prices, always' campaign does just that". The campaign reinforces to customers that with the hundreds of products for sale, prices can be expected to stay the same low price – week-in, week-out.

In August of this year, Woolworths’ food group managing director said that we would see their marketing strategy evolve and their key themes of “fresh food and cheaper prices” would remain the same, however the messages portrayed would become more cohesive. Some analysts are of the belief that the $200 million dollar price investment Woolworths has spent has not gained traction with consumers as of yet and is likely to have had little impact on same-store sales in the September quarter.

Lauren Musat
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School