Retailers take image campaigns to prime time

Promotion on national TV channels is a communication policy only leaders of supermarket and hypermarket segments embrace, with the high costs compared with other promotion ways as one of the reasons for this.
Though the direct target of national televisions is much broader than that of the store networks that expanded only in cities with over 30,000 inhabitants, retailers are counting on increasing awareness and consumer mobility when drawing up TV promotion budgets.
The 4 retailers currently promoted on national TV, Billa, Carrefour, Real and Plus Discount, are also among the biggest players on their market segments currently. They invested some 8.2m euros (rate-card value) in the first 10 months of 2007 in TV promotion, according to Alfacont monitoring company data. “(…) Promotion on TV is practically an image campaign (…),” stated Andreea Mihai, marketing manager at Carrefour Romania. She also said the network’s 2007 budget for promotion on TV would top the 2006 one.
According to Alfacont data, the rate-card value of Carrefour investments on this communication channel stood at 2m euros in the first 10 months. This year’s biggest rate card investment on TV was the 3.1m-euro one operated by Billa, leader of the domestic supermarket segment.
Real Hypermarket boasted the biggest number of TV spots by a food retailer in the first 10 months.
Plus Discount is now the only discounter investing in promotion on national TV channels. However, the rate-card value of the company’s investments shrank in the past year, to 0.7m euros in the first 10 months of 2007, from 2.1m euros in the similar period of 2006, according to Alfacont data. “(…) Being already present in a rising number of Romanian cities, we considered it necessary to redirect a large part of our budget to our main promotion channel, the weekly flier with the product offer,” explained Ioana Marginean, marketing manager at Plus Discount Romania.
Weekly fliers are a promotion method almost all international retailers on the market resort to. Auchan is the only hypermarket chain counting on the policy of almost zero expenses in network promotion. Daniel Micu, managing partner with Trout & Partners Consulting Romania, is also against FMCG retailers’ TV promotion strategy and anticipates food retailers are going to remove national TV from their media budgets.