How many repetitive messages do we really take in?

It struck me the other day how many messages in supermarkets are bullishly reinforced these days.

I have felt for years that the psychology of the shopping journey was one of the finest art forms of audience understanding - luring us around the store in a pre-set way but tricking us to think it is unique to us, but I wonder if things have gone too far.

This photo is from my local Tesco store - note the sheer volume of price cutting imagery.

Comments

[Nick Toye]

Is it not just the scatter gun effect? My Dad also used to say to me 'if you throw enough seeds, something will grow'. Which is fine for some aspects, but I personally believe this kind of marketing just causes negative responses.

For example, Go Compare campaign with the opera singer. It has gotten to the point where I get angry and just feel like I want to destroy the singer rather than use the Go Compare service. Others may say that at least it's getting you talking about the service - but I would never use the service based on my negative experiences of its campaign.

As for your supermarket photo, for me it's just lazy marketing, can almost here the marketing manager (if there is one) saying - 'just put loads up, really push the message out there'. It probably just cheapens the shop some what.

Where is it by the way?

[Mark Jennings]

Thanks Nick, this was in Lewisham Tesco, South London. Is it the same in Tesco stores near you?

I don't think any POS or marketing space in a supermarket is scatter gun, but I may be wrong. In my experience the research into shopper psychology runs deep.

I know what you mean about the GoCompare ads. This is an interesting example. If you look at the Recall figures for the top 20 ads, listed weekly in the industry rags, this ad comes up highly each week - the feeling is that Recall = Activity but there are some ads you really have to question that