With Walkers throwing its lot behind its massive ‘Choose or Lose!’ campaign, Woodlands Local is getting in on the act with a full in-store POS execution and the results so far have been excellent.
Shoppers at Woodlands Local love a bit of NPD, something that’s undoubtedly true across the country, so big campaigns by major players like Walkers are always worth getting behind. The crisp giant’s latest ‘Choose or Lose!’ campaign is backed by a new TV ad featuring Gary Lineker that launched on August 28 and will be on air for six weeks.
We decided to get involved early however, and had Walkers visit the store to implement a full POS kit, including a flashing-light HOD and clip strips galore. Even though the TV ad hadn’t aired yet, the response from customers was enthusiastic with many commenting on how they’d heard about the campaign.
We dedicated the top shelf of our main crisps fixture to the campaign using a high impact headboard and sited the ‘competing’ flavours next to each other. (The principle is that customers have the chance to keep their favourite flavours or swap them for a brand-new flavour, the new flavours being firm favourites in other countries.)
The decision will be between three classic flavours and three new flavours:
- Salt & Vinegar will be challenged by Lime & Black Pepper from Australia
- Prawn Cocktail is taking on Paprika from Spain
- Smoky Bacon is up against Bacon & Cheddar from the USA.
The outcome will be determined by the number of single packs bought in store (80%) and from an online vote (20%).
The ‘Choose or Lose’ ad sees a woman who is selecting a packet of Walkers crisps from a store and doesn’t know which flavour to choose. She is thrown into a gameshow hosted by Gary Lineker with an audience split into two sets of supporters: Salt & Vinegar, and Lime & Black Pepper.
While the stock has only been in-store for a short time, there are some early indicators in Woodlands as to how the battles are playing out. A quick glance at the Epos data reveals that Bacon & Cheddar is by far the favourite of any of the flavours involved – so Smoky Bacon’s days may be numbered!
So far Lime & Black Pepper is pretty much neck and neck with Salt & Vinegar, though that may be simply down to customers wanting to try the new flavours, rather than an outright preference.
It also looks like Prawn Cocktail might have a fight on its hands because Paprika is currently outgunning it, perhaps driven by the fact that Paprika crisps will already be familiar to anyone who holidays in Europe where the flavour is pretty much ubiquitous.
Most encouraging of all, our total crisps sales over the last few weeks are up around 11% on our average weekly sales, so the campaign is clearly working for us.
Customer feedback also suggests however that there will be some very unhappy campers if Walkers does indeed kill the Smoky Bacon and Prawn Cocktail flavours as they’ve promised…
