Tesco on the turn

No doubt rivals Sainsburys and Morrisons are rubbing their hands with glee at Kantar Worldpanel's announcement of a fall of 0.4pc in market share for Tesco.

But don't let the headlines cloud the facts: Tesco still leads by a mile, with almost a third of the total: a whopping 30.4% of grocery spending in the 12 months to 4th September; and that's before you take account of their global operations, like China, where I hear they're doing great guns.

We like green

I was reading a piece in WARC News this morning about UK brands reaping measurable, commercial benefits from green marketing.

Kingfisher Group, parent of DIY chains B&Q, Castorama, Brico Dépôt, Screwfix and Koçtaş, believes this segment will be a key growth area in the future and is planning an 'eco-squad' where by green experts will assess homes and suggest energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly enhancements to customers, materials for which can be purchased via group companies.

Marks & Spencer has an M&S Energy arm, which is selling energy services into the £40bn UK energy market and has a head - Mike Barry - of sustainable business.

Unlilever too has been looking at the lifecycle impact of 1,500 products in 14 countries and seeking ways to reduce their harmful effects on the environment through e.g. developing detergents that use less water and energy - according to Gavin Neath, Unilever svp, sustainability.

It's good to see these initiatives becoming core parts of brand marketing with real commercial benefits isn't it? At the IPA we have long-since embraced the benefits of sustainable marketing, We have a partner deal with Envido, whereby IPA members can get commercial discounts on specialist advice on ISO 14001 certification, which enables companies to cut energy bills and reduce their carbon emissions

Our members have also created sustainable marketing campaigns for clients which have been submitted as case studies to our Effectiveness Awards programme. These effectiveness case studies include British Glass, Tesco and, last year, Kenco

We like green, do you?

Tesco: every second counts

I was reading a piece about Tesco on Yahoo! Finance this morning.

As part of its Clubcard scheme where customers earn points on supermarket purchases, including non-food items, it had launched its Big Clubcard Voucher Exchange back in November. Customers had the chance over the next four weeks of doubling their points by exchanging special vouchers before the closing date of 5th December.

Tesco not only made great play of the vouchers being applicable to a much wider range of items but that vouchers could also be exchanged online. They expected a steady but even flow of voucher exchanges over the four weeks of the scheme. Of course, given the sense of retail omnipresence these days, many shoppers left it until the last minute (literally) causing long queues in supermarkets, slow online response times and eventually the collapse of the entire Tesco website.

As in my last post on online shopping a lot of shoppers today perceive that online servers are uniformly available 24/7. They're not. Online shopping processing speeds depend on online traffic - you just don't have to try and park the car first. If £831,000 can be spent online in one minute how could Tesco not have planned for a possible shopping peak at the expiry date of its voucher scheme?

Perhaps they will learn some lessons about digital before running the scheme again, or is it just basic sales promotion? As they say, every second counts.