Media & Marketing/Siobhán O'Connell:Convenience store group ADM Londis is launching a €3 million advertising campaign next week, the company's first new advertising burst in three years, with a spend three times higher than last time.
Ahead of such a big spend, Londis invested in 12 months of qualitative research to investigate the current positioning of Londis and to assess consumer reaction to its "Close to You" marketing message.
Londis currently has 360 stores in its group and plans to open another 40 in 2008. Spar Ireland is Londis's biggest competitor with 440 stores. Other competing convenience store chains include Mace, SuperValu and Centra.
Common sense would suggest that consumers go to the convenience store that is, well, most convenient in terms of location. And the Londis research bore this out.
Shoppers have positive perceptions about how branded convenience stores have improved their offering and service. However, the overall view of advertising by the sector is one of sameness.
Spontaneous recall of advertising for this sector tends, in the first instance, to include slogans - usually, but not always, attributed to the correct brand. However, even where slogans were correctly attributed, respondents often seemed to struggle to remember the precise details of brand campaigns.
The key objective of the new Londis campaign is to make the company more distinctive, according to Ruth Norton, group marketing manager. "We want to bring the Londis brand to a new level of salience and memorability among our target audience," she said.
To try and make the Londis brand stand out from the crowd, Londis commissioned six different television commercials to demonstrate various shopping scenarios: the young mum stocking up on the weekly essentials; the twentysomething young officer worker dropping in for a healthy lunch; the thirtysomething singleton shopping for her dishwasher tablets; and the yuppie couple picking up a bottle of wine for their dinner party.
So, no left-field approach there then, and the "Close To You" slogan has been retained too.
However, the advertisements are quite zippy, using a combination of special effects and clever edits to show characters moving seamlessly from the situation they're in to a nice, bright Londis store.
The advertising jingle/song, composed by John Walsh, is catchy and that may help the advertisements resonate with "couch potatoes".
The Londis campaign kicks off on television next Monday with 40-second and 20-second launch advertisements. Radio will also form part of the marketing mix.
Xerox to shed its old-fashioned image
The Xerox brand logo has been in existence since 1948. It has been modified over the years but the current logo has been more or less the same since 1961. That is about to change. Out goes the upper-case lettering to be replaced by rounder and chunkier lower-case lettering, along with a big red sphere that looks like a cricket ball.
What's going on? Xerox was founded in 1906 as Haloid, a manufacturer of photographic paper and equipment. The brand was changed to Xerox 60 years ago, but in 1958 they changed their mind and remodeled as Haloid Xerox.
In 1961, the Haloid name was finally dumped and in the 1990s "The Document Company" was incorporated into the logo. Those three words were shelved in 2004 and 2008 sees the latest makeover.
The new logo is an attempt to break with the past, according to Richard Wergan, vice-president, worldwide brand, marketing and advertising at Xerox. He said that, although Xerox has developed scores of new products in recent years, the brand is perceived by customers as being old-fashioned.
The red sphere in the new logo is not intended to appeal to cricket devotees. The company says the intersecting ribbons encircling the sphere are supposed to signify the worldwide connections between Xerox's customers, employees and other stakeholders.
The new softer and rounder typeface font is intended to make Xerox a "more approachable" brand.
Xerox estimates that it will take 18 months to replace its existing logo on all products, facilities, vehicles and marketing materials.
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