Tesco: 66 points for Dave Lewis – No.21 – Love Every Mouthful

Today is 46 (forty-six) days until Dave Lewis takes the helm at the UK’s biggest retailer. Grocery Insight are counting down to the start of his reign with an improvement point per day. Due to the growing nature of the list causing issues with our template, please click on Tesco to see all the posts containing the 66 ‘to do’ points. Today we consider ‘Love Every Mouthful’.

Remember Love Every Mouthful? It’s still seen in stores albeit sparingly, with token mentions on Twitter too. However when it first rolled into stores last year (mid July) it was everywhere! A full PoS launch that can’t have been cheap in terms of a PoS cost – focussing on fresh foods with livery on all chillers, signage for Produce and Bakery, fridge theatre centering around Strawberries and Cream with a real store focus on sampling. Fast forward to this year and there’s been virtually no mention of it in stores. Why?

It seemed really odd with such a big launch last year, fair enough mid July was arguably too late and it should have been rolled late May, early June at the latest (think rolling Christmas mid November, too late!) However the campaign came in mid July and whilst we’d had a record summer, there wasn’t too much of it left.

The campaign itself was very good, food was central which was unlike Tesco but showed they were changing their focus. A good launch and Twitter (unsurprisingly) was alive with images showing a great job with samples, trying to get customers going with a food perspective – a great shift in focus.

However as the seasons change in August and the Christmas ranges start to appear in store, ‘Love Every Mouthful’ with its summer connotations around Strawberries & Cream and BBQ’s looks out of place as the seasons change. There was a focus on Produce seasonal change in the Autumn but it quickly faded away with the focus on Christmas and the Finest relaunch.

This year, there has been precious little mention of LEM / #LEM in store, certainly nowhere near the level of PoS that was seen when it launched. Was it a one off? If so how did that stack up when it was signed off? Tesco still sell food so LEM could have formed a part of the sampling and getting customers to ‘try new’.

It seems odd to invest so much in launching a campaign last year for it to miss the peak Summer season (June / half of July) and then not return this year. There continues to be an absence of cohesive marketing messages in store, not just PoS of course, but the underlying messages – JS do provenance / values so well, Asda trade on price, Morrisons on Fresh. Tesco ??

That’s the issue for Dave Lewis, customers need a reason to believe in Tesco. Love Every Mouthful was a decent enough campaign but disappeared too soon. A food focussed strategy is sorely needed.

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