Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase





2014 | |

Cracking open TV for Tesco’s price war

Advertiser: Tesco (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd
Brand: Tesco
Creative Agency: Spin Communications Sdn. Bhd.
Credits: Maxus Malaysia — Shieng Yee Lim (Media Planner), Agnes Wong (Senior Implementation & Buying Manager), Faraz Shams Khan (Assoc. Business Director), Lorraine Capel (Managing Director)

The Challenge
Retail price wars are fought in the press, with their 1-day lead time for material submission. During Chinese New Year, TV has 25% higher viewership but its 5-day submission lead time meant that retail price ads could never air on TV. Until now.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
“Never say never” drove this campaign. Instead of negotiating on the usual factors such as price and programme, we worked together with Astro TV team for a win-win: Tesco broke new ground with TV advertising and Astro had a new revenue stream.

The Execution
A template that formed the basis for the 10-second TVC. When the product and price were released on a Thursday by Tesco, they were placed into the template by the production team. The lead-time was only 1 day for submission of material to Astro (this was negotiated to ensure competitive edge). The TVC was ready to air with a competitive product and price promotion on the upcoming Monday, on a platform that had no similar competitive ads. This was repeated every-week for 3 weeks for key product lines that needed to be pushed to the consumer. To ensure measurement & effectiveness of this new trial – relevant to sales, these products were not advertised anywhere else. To cut through the festive clutter, the 1st ad in the break was negotiated across primetime for Chinese programming. Tesco raised awareness of its products and prices to more people than ever.

The Results
This was a 1st in the Hypermarket category innovation for Tesco. Stocks in Tesco, of the products advertised, were sold-off the shelves within the 1st half of the day.. EVERYDAY for that week!