A short time ago I was told by a friend that they had recently started to shop at a lower priced supermarket.
He was pleased to let me know that their weekly food bill had come down considerably and in all honesty, they were more than happy with the standard of produce. The logo’s on the boxes were different, but the taste was still there.
Now as a senior creative at a respected marketing agency, I work with brands all day long. I work with global brands and small scale start ups. So you would think that when it comes to consumerism, I would be savvy, seeing past shiny packaging and buying smart. You would be wrong.
In reality I am a magpie for all things matte laminated, foil blocked and shaped like a bitten apple. So it had never crossed my mind to move away from Warburtons and Tetley Tea.
Well this weekend I dragged my wife and children off to ALDI to see what we could see. Overall the experience was pretty much what I expected. The presentation was lacking and the customer service on the checkouts was a little on the impersonal side but I guess that’s why I am paying lower prices, but there was one thing surprised me…
Just how naturally we found our regular weekly items but packaged differently. We may have been looking for ‘Coco Pops’ but we instantly picked up ‘Choco Rice’. We looked for ‘Dolmio’ sauce and ‘Raguletto’ seemed to be a natural replacement. We didn’t realise it at the time, but on reflection these products seemed to pick themselves, we were shopping without looking.
The design of the branded products were near enough identical to the everyday consumer.
Colours were the same, graphics married up the only thing that was evidently different were the individual characters within the logo itself. All of this combined just goes a little way to prove, that there is much more to a brand then just a name. That can also be said about the supermarket itself. We may have saved a little money, but we will return to Morrisons next Saturday.