RETAIL RANDOMS

BEFORE YOU GO: PROFITABLE STREET NAMES / TROUBLE BREWING

GOTTA LOVE IT

Never short of a clever idea or two to cause exhilaration and offence in equal measure, the marketing team at Marmite have done it again with a new out-of-home billboard execution to support the launch of its new (thankfully) limited-edition Marmite Dynamite variant.

Love it or hate it, it’s a “chilli breakfast spread” and, love it or hate it, it’s only available in Sainsbury’s.

Whatever you think of it, you’ve just gotta love the billboard they created to support the launch.

MINIMUM PRICING – MY HOW YOU’VE CHANGED (OUR MINDS)

As an industry, we tend to be pretty conservative (with a small ‘c’) when it comes to change, particularly legislative change. So it was fascinating to read TLT solicitor Stephen McGowan’s opinion piece in this issue [insert link to page 17] which is basically an impassioned demand that the Minimum Unit Pricing (MUP) trial doesn’t get tinkered with before it runs its course. Perhaps impassioned is the wrong word, but it’s as impassioned as a lawyer can get.

Anyway, it got us to trawling through back issues of SLR and thinking about the time all those years ago when MUP was first mooted. The convenience industry was up in arms about another bit of legislation that would restrict their ability to run their businesses how they saw fit. There was outrage. There was fury.

Fast forward to today and most local retailers in Scotland will tell you it’s one of the best things that ever happened to the sector.

Overnight it pulled the rug from under the supermarkets who could no longer offer ridiculously cheap deals on cases of beer just to get punters through the door. Before MUP you could buy a case of beer in Tesco cheaper than you could buy it from your wholesaler.

The net result was a drop in total volume sales but a big increase in margins for retailers.

It’s a funny old game, right enough, and you really need to be careful what you wish for.