How Tesco used social media to drive emotional resonance
Tesco achieved consumer engagement and sales uplift by putting an emotional spin on a price-driven campaign
Tesco’s ‘Prices that take you back’ campaign, launched to take on the discounters during its centenary year, reached consumers through many channels. But social media was a key battleground, allowing Tesco and creative agency BBH to engage audiences and drive the reach of the message.
The brand used social listening to gauge what its customers wanted, and to tailor its offers accordingly.
With the overall nostalgia theme in mind, deals included reducing the price of Freddo chocolates to a historic price of 10p, while a competition to see whether Skips or Frazzles were the better retro snack kept shoppers engaged.
Choosing products that sparked an emotional resonance with customers magnified the impact of the strategy.
The activations succeeded in driving interaction, sales and PR coverage, as well as highlighting a sense of difference between Tesco and the competition it faced in the shape of German discount retailers.
Paid and organic activity across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat performed strongly, with creative assets developed for each platform.
The retailer was seeking to get the nation talking about its value, to drive fame for its campaign, and the emotional aspects of the plan helped this to happen.
The results of the campaign were instant. Tesco sold nearly half a million Freddo bars in one week, inspiring YouGov to survey the nation about the snack. The ‘Snack that Takes You Back’ contest between Skips and Frazzles smashed performance benchmarks also, with 455,000 people voting, and Tesco saw its highest-ever-recorded ROI.
Meanwhile, consumer perception of Tesco’s value for money improved across all metrics, which all culminated in the supermarket winning the 2020 Marketing Week Masters award for social media.
“For a price-focused campaign it had great creativity, insight and brand building that unsurprisingly delivered big results for a brand needing to continue a tough turnaround,” said the judging panel.
Tesco also took home the prize for multichannel marketing, as well as the award for sponsorship and partner marketing for its collaboration with ITV and Thames TV on the return of Supermarket Sweep.