Co-op launched its new brand as it looks to reposition from ‘distress to destination’ retailer
The Co-op is hoping to convince people to shop at its stores more often and as it looks to get customers to reappraise its food offering and brand and draw a line in the sand after the scandal of recent years.
The campaign, which is now live on TV, is the first to launch the retailer’s new look. The Co-op is returning to its blue clover-leaf logo as it looks to champion the role it plays in local communities.
Speaking to Marketing Week, the Co-op’s customer director Jemima Bird said where before the retailer has championed its slogan ‘Little, Often, Co-op’ it now wants to start communicating “more and often”.
“We are moving from being a distress retailer to a destination retailer and from little and often to more and often,” she explained.
“We want to give shoppers a reason to turn left into Co-op rather than right into a competitor.”
Jemima Bird, customer director, The Co-op
A 40-second brand ad, created by Leo Burnett, aims to encourage shoppers to be as “unpredictable as summer” and to position the Co-op as a convenience retailer that has everything covered whether the weather is sunny or raining. It will be supported by four 10-second adverts showing off Co-op own label products as it attempts to show off the quality and range available.
Twitter simplified its 140-character tweet rules
Twitter is making various changes to tweets in a bid to “simplify” its product, allowing users to express themselves with more room in 140-character tweets.
The changes, which will be rolled out globally over the coming months, include:
- Media attachments, including photos and videos, will no longer count toward the character limit.
- @names in reply to tweets will be removed from the count.
- People will now be able to retweet and quote tweet themselves, enabling them to resurface any of their previous tweets and add new commentary.
- Any new tweet beginning with an @name will be seen by all followers.
According to the company, the simplified tweet rules will make conversations faster and more intuitive for people who come to Twitter everyday and those who are new to the service.
“One of the biggest priorities for this year is to refine our product and make it simpler,” says Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO. “We’re focused on making Twitter a whole lot easier and faster. This is what Twitter is great at – what’s happening now, live conversation and the simplicity that we started the service with.”
The changes will be welcomed by brands, according to Daniel Price, head of social operations at creative digital agency Lost Boys.
“One of the most consistent challenges brands see with the platform is around character limits – it can be a frustrating process putting together engaging copy and adverts with a moveable amount of characters to work with, so this is a nice step from their side. Let’s hope this is the start of a larger move towards simplifying how Twitter works – which will be key to its growth,” he says.
M&S CEO lays out his brand revival strategy
New Marks & Spencer boss Steve Rowe used his first formal set of results to lay out a five-point strategy that he hopes will revive the brand by appealing to ‘Mrs M&S’ but also to those customers that shop infrequently at its stores.
M&S saw underlying profits rise 4.3% to £689m in the year to 2 April while revenues were up 2.7% to £9.5bn. Yet as has been the story for most of the past five years this was a tale of two businesses.
Food continued its strong run, with like for like sales up by 0.2% and total sales increasing 3.6%. Yet in general merchandise, which includes clothing and home, total sales fell 2.2% while sales at stores open for more than a year were down by 2.9%.
“We need to think about: How do we get brand positioning absolutely right? How do we get clothing and home back up and how do we continue to grow our food business with pace?” Rowe asked at an event in London today (25 May).
Rowe has made “recovering and growing” clothing and home his top priority, while at the same time not losing focus in food.
To support his changes, M&S has also put its ad account up for pitch. Patrick Bousquet-Chavanne, the brand’s marketing boss, says: “We’re on a mission to put our customers at the heart of everything we do and it’s vital we offer rich engagement across all their experiences with M&S – from in-store, to digital and mobile, to TV advertising.”
Corporate brands engaged in ‘pursuit of the mediocre’ in digital
New research shows that the majority of FTSE 350 corporate brands are churning out “mediocre” digital communications, missing out on the opportunity to engage with audiences through their corporate websites.
Radley Yeldar’s FTSE 350 Standout Digital Survey focuses on corporate website performance, looking at best practice among the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250. AstraZeneca topped the list this year, rising 63 places after it launched a new site. The pharmaceutical company is closely followed by SABMiller, GSK, Shell and Unilever to complete the top five.
The research found that the FTSE 100 maintains a clear distance over counterparts from the FTSE 250 when it comes to digital performance. Richard Coope, Radley Yeldar’s digital director, says a “leadership pack” has broken away from the rest of the list – and that the divide is only increasing.
“The top five are absolute standout examples of strong digital communications. However, there is a significant gap between the top five and the rest, and the FTSE 100 and FTSE 250, which seems to be growing. We’ve seen a lot of brands that perhaps want to do digital but have been slow on the uptake,” he says.
According to the report, digital experience remains consistently poor, with the FTSE 350 scoring an average of less than 40% for website experience, which scored web content and web experience out of 100 and then averaged those scores to get a percentage.
The countdown to new EU data regulations kicked off
This week marked two years until brands must be compliant with new EU data laws and marketers should not underestimate the work needed to make sure they do not fall foul of the regulations.
On 25 May 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will come into force. Assuming the UK votes to remain in Europe, it will replace the UK Data Protection Act and mean that for the first time Europe will have a harmonised data protection regime that impacts not only companies based in the EU but also those that want to do business here.
Read more: How to keep on the right side of data regulation
The central tenet of the regulation tightens the requirements around when brands can use data. For example, brands will no longer be able to bundle data consent in with their terms of service or provide an opt-out box. Instead they will have to get specific and unambiguous consent.
The consequences of being on the wrong side of the law are also getting stricter. Previously the most serious breaches of the UK Data Protection Act would get a maximum fine of £500,000. Now that has increased to €20m or 4% of global turnover.
The five key changes
- Personal data – A broader definition of what personal data covers could see IP addresses and cookies may included, although the ICO is yet to issue full guidance
- The definition of consent – A new definition of consent says it must be freely given, informed, specific and unambiguous
- Notification about security breaches – Companies must notify the ICO within 72 hours or without undue delay and report data subjects, types of data and how they plan to mitigate the situation
- Sanction for breaches – Increases to €10m or 2% of global turnover for sanctions, rising to €20m or 4% of global turnover for serious breaches
- Increased information requirements – The new requirements have to be included in a privacy statement including name and contact details, the fact data will be used for marketing purposes and how it will be stored. This also includes six new data subject rights including the right to opt out, the right to access or move their data to a different company and the right to have their details deleted.
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