Here's the latest waste of money and space from Sainsbury's supermarket and Future Farms.
They've allowed their ad agency or in house team, to create this wasteful piece of advertising for them.
What you see above are the back to back sides of a brochure that's been posted through the letter box a few days ago, promoting and selling Future Farm's range of chicken and meats.
Let's look at the first headline, that's taken up nearly half the selling space with its large sized font - Chicken's Been Upgraded.
Hmmm....
It makes you wonder, the chicken's been upgraded... from what?
And following on from that, what does that say about Future Farms previous standards and quality of chickens, or for that matter, Sainsbury's current chicken offerings?!
And then there's an image of the box of chicken, with a 50% off slip at the bottom of the piece.
And that's it.
That's the advertising offering.
Now can you be any blander? Can you be less creative? Can you be any more wasteful?
How could this be done differently or better?
They could have told a story of how they've come about creating this upgraded chicken. It's a new line so that'd be helpful to know more about it. And if space was an issue, they could have continued the story via sharing a link to a website page.
There's a little Plant Based wording on the box so saying more about that, and who this upgraded chicken would be best suited to, would also zero in on the right potential customer.
They could show pictures of various meals incorporating the new chicken range. Maybe creating a little series of ads readers can go online to view, demonstrating various life scenarios for differing sets of people and specific recipes could be suited to their lifestyles.
Maybe also sharing a list of the best wines and desserts that compliment the offering.
That seems to be a lot more appealing, informative and inviting than the current version.
Let's look on the flip side of the Brochure.
You get the following headline -- Meat The Range -- with the range of product pictures shown below that.
An obvious, yet lazy effort.
Why?
Because Tuna isn't meat. Chicken isn't referred to as meat.
Trying to pack in everything like they've done on one measly brochure, doesn't have someone incentivised to want to try the line out.
Much better if they made our mouths water with irresistible copy and story about one product line, say for example their sausages, and then saying something like -
--- if you love these succulent, juicy and flavoursome sausages, you'll possibly crave our delicious line of burgers, mince, meatballs, chicken and tuna ---
Paper is expensive compared to digital pages, that's why you want your copy, images, and story, to justify their very existence on the page.
What you also don't want to do is waste white space by either leaving too much visible white space, or sloppily patching together words and images in an enlarged way to take up the space because you've no fresh ideas to work from.
I'd also introduce a continuity/membership type element to the business.
If I was the Pres or owner of Future Farms and that was the effort I received from the agency, I'd either change agencies, or scrutinise every piece of marketing and advertising promotion to look for the big and little flaws and leaks, or, as do what many, switched on savvy entrepreneurs do heading their own business - write all the copy and advertising myself.
Why?
Because killer strategy backed up by solid effective copywriting is the highest paying activities there is in a business, or one of them.
It's the leverage factor, the needle mover, difference maker that makes the big difference in a business when it comes to money, customers, continuity.
And you don't want to leave that to chance on an outfit who're consistently bankrupt on the creativity front.
http://simple-marketing-solutions.com/mm.pdf
