Aldi profits soar as ads attract middle classes
Aldi’s Marketing Week Engage Award winning ad campaign ‘Like Aldi’ helped drive a rise in sales and profit at the discount supermarket.
It recorded a 29.4% sales increase to £2.76bn in 2011 and profit of £57.8m in 2011 following a loss of £56m in the previous year. The supermarket says that performance in 2012 to data is in line with the previous year.
The discounter will invest £181m opening 40 new stores by the end of 2013 and plans to double its store portfolio in the next 10 years. The expansion is likely to be backed by an increase in marketing activity as Aldi looks to maintain growth.
Aldi’s growth has come form both existing customers spending more in store as well as an influx of middle class shoppers shifting spend from the Big Four supermarkets in the face of rising pressure on household budgets.
It has been targeting more affluent consumers with advertising pitching its own brand products against branded goods. Its ‘Like Aldi’ campaign, which includes executions such as the ‘I don’t like tea, I like gin’ ad, was named the best advertising campaign at the Marketing Week Engage Awards 2012.
It is also introducing more premium products.
Aldi achieved its all time record market share of 2.9 per cent in August recording growth or 26.6 per cent, according to the latest Kantar Worldpanel figures. Kantar also reported that Aldi recorded a 36 per cent rise in spend from existing customers over the past two years.
