I was in my local supermarket last weekend and something caught my eye. No, not the gentleman kind enough to expose half his backside crouching down to the bottom shelf - but the point of purchase display and packaging for Old Spice. What stood out for me was that it looked as tired and old as it always has done. Which begs the question, why go to so much effort of producing the grandest of grand repositioning campaigns if you’re not going to follow it through all the way to the point of sale? No one can deny the multi award winning creativity of the ‘man your man could smell like’ campaign. It is simply one of the best campaigns of the last few years. But I have read conflicting reports on the impact it actually had on sales. And judging by what I saw in my local Sainsbury’s, this does not surprise me.
A similar thing could be said for TK Maxx. I was pleasantly surprised by the creative for their recent TV campaign, positioning the brand as a provider of all things classy and fashionable. Yet walking into one of their stores resembles something closer to the dole queue at the local job centre. Scruffy and disinterested sales staff, cheap looking, messy display units and clothes flung all over the place.
A great ad campaign, together with an effective media plan is only half the battle in this game. More thought and time needs to be allocated to overall business aspects. And the responsibility of this does fall with media agencies. In partnership with the client, they should be thinking about such things as retail environments, packaging, what can be done to smooth the buying process, etc etc.
*I have to point out that these thoughts are my own and in no way represent those of Mediacom or the WPP network
