JCDecaux targets car companies in ‘under-used’ Tesco supermarket drive

JCDecaux is launching a major campaign to persuade car companies to use its portfolio of Tesco advertising sites. It is part of a strategy to attract more brand advertising to the network.

The outdoor company hopes the campaign will change advertisers’ perceptions of the supermarket media and develop it into more than a point-of-sale medium.

A JCDecaux spokeswoman says: “Lots of advertisers should be in there but car companies, particularly, see point-of-sale as old-fashioned.”

The company will spend the next few months talking to brand managers at the car marques as well as their advertising agencies.

The new strategy, dubbed “Destination Tesco” by the company, follows a research campaign earlier in the year to segment Tesco’s customer base.

Car companies, which have hitherto shunned advertising at supermarkets, are the first of a number of sectors to be targeted.

David McEvoy, group marketing director at JCDecaux, says: “We can now identify the stores that people who are interested in buying a new car, or a holiday or a mortgage are most likely to use.

“The research clearly shows that the audience at Tesco are the very people car advertisers want to reach.”

JCDecaux claims that 25% of Tesco visitors are “mainstream shoppers’ who tend to choose cars on the basis of their looks and are most interested in brands such as Citroen, Fiat, Honda, Mitsubishi and Toyota.

The research also identified “Finer Foods shoppers”, which accounts for 16% of customers.

Consumers in this group are likely to buy Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz, VW and Volvo and are extremely lowlevel viewers of TV.

JCDecaux has a portfolio of sites at 450 Tesco stores, including 48-sheet billboard sites at 105 supermarkets and 6-sheet sites across the portfolio.