Wal-Mart Avoids Itself in New Ads

Wal-Mart’s new ad campaign focuses little on the company itself, choosing instead to convey a touchy-feeling notion of “the good life.” Last we checked, though, Wal-Mart wasn’t helping anybody live better, so we’re not really sure where the company’s going with this.

Wal-Mart rolls out new ad message [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette]

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. launched a new twist on an old theme Wednesday, replacing its 19-yearold Always Low Prices tag line with Save Money, Live Better.

The message began appearing in television commercials Tuesday night. It also will appear on shopping bags and store receipts, company spokesman Melissa O’Brien said.

But don’t look for Always Low Prices to disappear right away from Wal-Mart storefronts or the sides of its more than 7, 000 trucks because “that [message ] still holds true,” O’Brien said.

The world’s largest retailer also unveiled a continuously updating “ticker” outside its Bentonville home office, which it says shows how much money it has saved customers since the first of the year.

“The new advertising tells the same story we’ve told since day one, how we’re working hard to save people money so they can live better,” Chief Marketing Officer Stephen Quinn said in a press release.

Wal-Mart’s latest theme should come as little surprise to those who follow the company. In the past few months, “saving people money so they can live better” has become a mantra for company of- ficials in their public statements and a staple of press releases.

Still, the company’s sales at stores open at least a year have been below investors’ expectations and the company’s stock price has fallen sharply since midsummer. It closed Wednesday at $ 42.71 a share, down 23 cents or 0.54 percent.

Wal-Mart’s chief advertising agency, The Martin Agency of Richmond, Va., will incorporate the theme throughout Wal-Mart’s promotions, the company said. Wal-Mart hired Martin in January, more than a month after firing its top advertising executive, Julie Roehm, and dismissing Draft FCB, the agency she recommended.

Wal-Mart alleged misconduct on Roehm’s part. She sued in Michigan, her former home, claiming she was owed severance pay. A judge dismissed the lawsuit in August, saying Michigan was the wrong venue.

Four other advertising agencies also will incorporate the new theme in Wal-Mart’s advertising.

Last year’s main advertising campaign featured the Wal-Mart “smiley” face bouncing around a store slashing prices.

Retail consultant Don Delzell said the new advertising theme should be effective. Rather than focusing on a broad, price-cutting message, he said, the company can point to specific examples of how it brought customers lower prices on such items as flat-panel televisions, laptop computers and digital cameras.

“It’s all about aspirational marketing — what does the consumer aspire to ?” said Delzell, a partner in the consulting firm Retail Advantage in Redondo Beach, Calif.

“It’s a positioning they can deliver on. They’re already delivering on it,” he said.

That approach, however, hasn’t cleared the company’s overstock of slow-moving apparel and home lines. John Menzer, Wal-Mart’s vice chairman and chief administrative officer, told retail analysts at a meeting last week that markdowns will continue through the company’s third quarter in apparel and through the fourth quarter in the home department.

Wal-Mart said its new savings ticker is based on an update of a study done for the company two years ago by Global Insight Inc., a multidisciplined research firm in Waltham, Mass.

The earlier study, based on data from 1985 and 2004, concluded that Wal-Mart had the effect of reducing consumer prices by 3. 1 percent over what they would have been absent Wal-Mart’s presence — as a result of Wal-Mart’s prices and other retailers lowering their prices to compete. The study estimated Wal-Mart’s impact at $ 2, 330 per household.

Adding two more years of data to the study bumped that figure to $ 2, 500, according to the report Wal-Mart released.

Wal-Mart’s organized critics said the company-funded study was misleading.

Meghan Scott, spokesman for WakeUpWalMart. com, said in an e-mailed statement that Wal-Mart’s push to hold down prices has resulted in unsafe products and loss of U. S. jobs. The company “pressures its Chinese suppliers to cut corners on product and food safety, drives American manufacturing jobs overseas and prices health insurance out of workers’ reach,” she said. Nu Wexler, spokesman for Wal-Mart Watch, cited other studies that conclude Wal-Mart’s presence in communities leads to a net economic loss. “Legitimate, independent studies not commissioned by Wal-Mart show that when the company comes to town, poverty levels go up, wages go down and small businesses go away,” he said. WakeUpWalMart. com is funded mainly by the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Wal-Mart Watch gets most of its funding from the Service Employees International Union.

Posted by Alex Goldschmidt on Thursday, September 13, 2007

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