That Works Weekly provides an alternative take on the week’s marketing and branding news. In Episode 5, Tesco direct us to the pubs, Coca-Cola has some inspired new branding, Heineken challenge gender stereotypes and people love Primark far too much.
Tesco welcome back the pubs
Supermarket giants Tesco impressed the nation this week with their ‘look how nice we are’ advertising campaign, instructing their customers to head to their local pub rather than buy cheaper alcohol from their stores. “Pubs have had it tough this year.” The ad begins. “So, as good as our deals are, this week we’d rather you support your local pub. Because right now, #EveryLittleHelps.” It should’ve gone on to say “and we’ve made an absolute killing selling you our 10-can crates for £9 over the last year, so we can probably afford for you to enjoy a couple of beer garden pints this week instead. See you next week when it rains.” They also announced overall sales of £53.4billion in the year up to February, so can also probably cope with people supporting their local butcher, baker, candlestick maker, greengrocer, gift shop, convenience store and takeaway joint this week too.
Coca-Cola in can upgrade
Coca-Cola has ‘revamped’ the design of their fizzy drinks cans in an attempt to unify their products and engross more people into trying their other variants; Diet Coke, Coke Zero, etc. Said ‘revamp’ includes shifting their logo from the middle to the top of the can and… that’s it. No radical colour change, no new flavours or slogan, just the requirement to shift your eye level upwards slightly whilst looking at the can to determine the brand. Next, they’ll go really mad and change the diameter of the ring-pull from 11 to 12mm. Speaking of creativity, another piece of industry news this week is that Next is teaming up with DIY company Homebase to install mini garden centres in some of its stores. Diving head-first into new realms of imagination, these will be called – wait for it – ‘Garden by Homebase at Next’. Catchy.
Heineken: women like beer too!
Showcasing a little more creativity are Heineken’s marketing team, as UK market research company Kantar crowned their ‘Cheers to all’ campaign as the most “creatively innovative and impactful” advert of 2020. The ad shows bar and waiting staff mistakenly handing bottles of beer to men and more ‘feminine’ drinks, such as wine or cocktails, to women, when the orders were in fact the other way around. It’s a nice message, but how hard is it to hand a bottle of beer to the person who ordered the bottle of beer and the Porn Star Martini to the person who ordered the Porn Star Martini? It’s an advert championing incompetent waiters as much as anything. Nevertheless, it is nice to see a brand embracing gender inclusivity – remember when Yorkie said that girls weren’t allowed to eat their chocolate bars?
Maserati secure Beckham signing
Luxury car brand Maserati has announced the signing of David Beckham as its new specialist free-kick coach. I mean as its new global brand ambassador. According to the Italian company, Beckham is a “natural-born gamechanger” and the “perfect partner as we drive our brand forward into our new era”. That roughly translates to ‘David is a sexy bloke who will look good driving our sexy cars in our sexy adverts’. If the first ad is anything to go by, they’re not wrong; doing an unnecessary, tyre-shredding amount of wheel spins under a bridge wearing a Hawaiian shirt and expensive sunglasses never looked so damn cool.
The High Street reopens for business
This week’s ‘good news’ celebrates the fact that non-essential retail is back open for business! Monday morning saw us flock back to the High Streets to spend all of our lockdown savings, once we’d navigated our way around the three-mile queue for Primark. I always assumed that that place just sold reasonably-priced clothing, not handed out free lumps of gold. Anyway, physical stores are trading once more, with business leaders optimistic that the bounce-back in the UK’s economy could be “broader and faster” than expected. They also predict every single store in the UK to be made into a Primark by the year 2026.
