What is essential for nearly every company?
A good marketing campaign!
If you want your business to increase its brand awareness, to attract new customers and to generate more profit, marketing campaigns are the way to go.
A marketing campaign is designed to promote a specific product, service or goal on behalf of a company, brand or individual. It can be published trough many ways: television, print advertising, social media, email marketing…the possibilities are endless.
What type of marketing campaign YOU should choose depends strongly on YOUR organization. As there is a fine line between a successful and failed marketing campaign, you need to first carefully analyze your audience and be sensitive to a variety of possible reactions.
Do not ever loose track of your businesses’ value, which should be unique to set you off from the competition.
Remember: Authencity is key.
Now let's have a look at Aldi...
In January 2020 Aldi introduced a UK-campaign called the “Poorest Day Challenge”. Aldi's reason for the challenge was the supposedly "poorest day of the year," which is the last Friday of the month January before pay day marked by a month of Christmas holiday shopping and spending.
Furthermore, Aldi’s statement included that its campaign was created to show “just how easily you can feed your family healthy, balanced and affordable meals right through from the 'poorest day of the year' to pay day."
The challenge was executed by a London-based influencer named Natalie Lee, known by 90,000 Instagram followers as Style Me Sunday.
She documented her weekly shopping experiences at Aldi while spending no more than $33 - just half of the UK’s average family’s food budget - for her family of four for a week.
"Documenting how she got the most bang for her buck, Natalie shares creative inspiration aplenty for wholesome family meals, on a budget," the brand's statement commented.
On the first day of the campaign, the influencer shared an Instagram post about her participation in the challenge, writing: "January is probably the hardest month of the year financially for most people, so I'm interested to see if I can feed my family with a well-balanced and nutritious weeks' food shop."
FYI: This post and all the others regarding the campaign have been removed now, so you cannot access them anymore.
The first reactions were positive, and the followers were excited to see what creative meals Natalie will come up with. But then many people started criticizing the influencer’s involvement in the campaign and described the challenge as being insensitive and tone-deaf.
Here an example of a user: "Yikes. @aldiuk is tone-deaf apparently. When 1 in 5 are below the poverty line, austerity is not a tool to promote your brand."
Another user pointed out “So, you're 'playing at' being poor for one whole week? Except, of course, you're playing your little game in your nicely decorated home, with generous central heating, and your nice car filled with petrol, and your wardrobe filled with nice, clean clothes, and all your bills paid?”
Natalie addressed her involvement in Aldi’s “Poorest Day Challenge” right after: "It has been a real tough week for me," Lee said. "In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, I've recently been slated for a campaign I was involved with, justifiably so, I must say. I think it was in hindsight insensitive, and some people would say, offensive." She also continued by stating that she learned from taking part in the challenge and will be more careful with brands to partner with in the future.
An Aldi spokesperson declared that they still stand behind the campaign. "At Aldi, we are hugely proud of the work that we have done to democratize access to healthy and affordable food," a representative for the supermarket told BuzzFeed News. "Our campaign was intended to offer practical advice about how people can make their money go further."
The #poorestdaychallenge is an excellent example of a marketing campaign being not thought through sufficiently. Aldi had not taken into account that for some of their clients being limited to a small amount of money for food is not assigned to a “special” week but is their daily reality.
Additionally, the ad suggests that poor people aren’t trying hard enough to budget, as all the groceries they need to survive can be bought at Aldi for $33. This fires up the myth, that poor people generally aren’t trying hard enough.
Also, Aldi should have taken into consideration that their customer base has a lower than average household income and would surely be offended by this challenge.
What we learn out of this fail? Well, dealing with social issues to promote a product is and will always be problematic. Especially when cooperating with influencers, whose perspective isn't authentic to the wide public. Harvey Choat, managing director of Nexus Communications addresses this issue as a lack of authenticity, a common mistake in influencer marketing. "Influencer activations have become the default, when what would have worked better here is a serious partnership with a poverty charity based on solid research and a call on government and other stakeholders to ease the burden on families."
So always ensure to promote your campaign in a positive way to the right people: Authenticity is key.
To find out more, follow the links...
Comments