As March has finished and the Easter season comes to a close, the PromoNow Insights team has collated 19 promotions, both new and old, consisting of on-pack and in-store activations at Morrisons to provide helpful insights to anyone with a vested interest in brand promotions, category, and all things shopper marketing. This article will also explore how Morrisons have leveraged their in-store displays and provide a closer look at shopper marketing ideas in play. Morrisons are the UK’s 4th largest grocery retailer, although the latest 12-week popularity trend data from research firm, Kantar, position Morrisons in 5th place
Overall, there were 11 promotions that PromoNow has reviewed in the past (click here for previous promo insight articles), and 8 new brand promotions seen - keep reading to learn more..
Store POS (point-of-sale) materials
Shelf-stoppers, shelf-barkers, aisle fins
Free-standing display units (FSDUs)
Experiential Promotional Space
La Gioiosa – Win A Trip To Venice, Italy
Les Dauphines – A ‘Joie De Vivre’ Weekend In Paris
Maltesers – Win A Weekend Getaway Or Takeaway
Napolina – Win Big Family Days Out
Tullamore D.E.W – VIP Distillery Trip To Ireland
Ambrosia – Win 1000s of Moley Cuddly Toys
Carling – Win A Box At The Emirates FA Cup Final
The Morrisons store that the insights team visited had a strong collection of promotional materials and displays.
In March 2024, Morrisons took an assertive approach to Easter, pushing seasonal advertisements in-store, digitally, on radio, and through out-of-home (OOH) efforts.
These displays were seen across several aisles, with varying promotional messages. Some are based on brand activations, others advertising price promotions. Shelf stoppers and aisle fins make for eye-catching additions to capture the attention of a busy shopper. Having the displays stick out from the shelves quite literally stops consumers by disrupting the aisles with the displays and capturing the attention of a shopper who is walking straight down the aisle and not actively browsing shelves.
Not only can they be used for advertising and drawing attention to activations, but they can be used as a way to guide shoppers, indicating specific aisles and product categories.
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Meanwhile, a shelf barker works in a slightly different way, for example, in this Creme Egg shelf barker, the hot spot value is that it draws the attention of shoppers who are actively browsing the shelf, ensuring a product, promotion, or activation is not missed. These point-of-sale displays are a little more targeted, they focus on the shopper who is already browsing a particular shelf category, who already has a little bit of an idea of what they want, and the barker funnels relevant information, whether it be a branded product or activation. A trusted tool to convert eyes to making a brand choice.
Most commonly and in this case as well, FSDUs were seen around the usual high footfall areas, aisle end caps and sides, where there’s the most shopper attention.
There were also quite a few free-standing display units dotted around the store, a number of them were for brand promotions but a fair portion were Morrisons’ own, featuring a selection of Easter-related products or promoting certain products without hyper-customised designs on the FSDU, unlike the brand only examples below.
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Many SRPs such as display boxes make for a cost-effective promotional display tool, its simplicity and the quantity that can be deployed at once, make them a powerful and consistent addition to a brand and its plans for promotional displays and space within retailers
Morrisons itself had quite a few examples of shelf-ready display boxes. While some brands had promotion-specific display boxes, many were not specific to any promotion and simply included the branding, a few lines of copy, and generally a broader representation of the brand, focusing on the product line itself rather than any campaigns, activations, and promotions surrounding the product.
The scenario in which shoppers will see these SRPs and their main point of effectiveness is when shoppers are already browsing a specific section or shelf in an aisle, the value of the display box is to capture their attention to a specific shelf and a specific brand amongst other competitors on the shelf, becoming especially effective when it’s at the eye-level range.
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Although many floor decals were not brand promotion-specific, there were plenty of decals that focused on particular brands as a whole or included price promotions on a range of products. Morrisons has leveraged this part of their promotional display very strongly and it’s likely to see these more generic decals and price promotions to be accompanied by similar displays for brand promotions in Morrisons.
Missed opportunity? Guinness has made a great play as the title sponsor in Women’s Six Nations rugby, amplified in-store with this floor decal. Adding a scan to win QR code signals engagement, and a prize promotion giving away some sponsor complimentary prizes would have been an easy activation extension for a little extra budget.
These floor decals are harder for shoppers to miss, making it a valuable space for brands to invest in. It also doesn’t interrupt the shopper experience, making it a seamless integration as a promotional display in retailers such as Morrisons.
Given the nature of floor decals, the flexibility in image, size and shape provides an opportunity for brands to get creative with how the decal looks itself, opening a chance to create point-of-sale material that’s engaging and represents your brand even outside of promotional activations.
According to Access Point, the cost of a promotional space starts at around £330 per week, renting a prime promotional space for sampling or pop-up events is a fairly affordable endeavour for brands who want to run their activations at Morrisons. Specific areas are allotted for these promotional activations, the usual space is at the entrance and exit of the retailer due to their heavy foot traffic, making them the prime location for brands to be seen by shoppers.
Morrisons is a good pick for any promoters looking to engage with their local populace, it’s also equally effective for large, national campaigns as well.
Drink brands like La Gioiosa, Tullamore DEW, and Les Dauphins (all of which will be covered in this article) favour trips to their country of origin or their winery, distillery, or brewery. For La Gioiosa, being made in Italy - more specifically Treviso, Veneto, the promotion was a chance for participants to win a trip to Venice, Italy.
Running from October to February of 20024, the promotional bottles with a special on-pack bottle-neck tag have been spotted in a few retailers, including Morrisons. The prosecco brand opts for a minimal on-pack addition, the bottle-neck tag features a simple flat illustrated design and a sleek, elegant silver foil reverse that includes a QR code, embellished with their logo, easily allowing shoppers to participate in the activation.
La Gioiosa also opened the promotion to their Instagram audience, offering an avenue for their social media growth, appealing to audiences outside of shoppers in retailers.
Similarly, they’ve also advertised the promotion on X (formerly Twitter) encouraging shoppers to buy a bottle and enter the prize draw. Although the prize draw promotion follows a no-purchase necessary route, these activations are a great way to get consumers thinking about a brand and increase foot traffic to a brand’s product lines in retailers, despite whether or not a purchase is needed. Just be sure to seek help from an independent and auditable service provider, such as Promo Now, to conduct the prize draws, manage winner comms, and more.
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The wine brand located in the southern Rhône valley, takes its namesake from the province where the wine reserve of the heirs to the French throne once resided – Dauphiné.
Running a promotion from October to the last day of March in 2024, Les Dauphines captures shopper attention to this activation with a unique bottle-neck tag advertising the brand promotion, embracing the spirit of Paris with an illustrative cut-out of the Eiffel Tower.
The promotion matches well with the history and origins of Les Dauphins, with the chance to win lower prize tier bistro vouchers, among the grand prize of a weekend in Paris. For Les Dauphins who cite that their wine pairs “perfectly with bistro style dishes” and can be enjoyed “on their own as an aperitif to experience typical Parisian ‘bistro life’” it makes for a strategic promotion, following the blueprints for Les Dauphins’ core branding.
Les Dauphins has a strong grasp of what their customers enjoy and what makes for an appealing prize for their audience. Often, brands will lend this choice for prize fulfilment to an agency, and if they use an end-to-end platform that’s fully equipped to handle promotion-building, finding trustworthy prize fulfilment agencies and relevant prizes will likewise, not be a major concern.
For this promotion, a microsite is used. As Cellier des Dauphins does not have an individual website for their Les Dauphins Red product line and their main website is mostly focused on a French-speaking audience, having a microsite that directly funnels UK shoppers to the promotional site minimises confusion and guarantees that any information from the promotion and activation does not interfere or dilute the content of a brand’s main website.
In anticipation and celebration of Easter, Maltesers launched a promotion, featured across stores with free-standing display units (FSDUs) and promotional displays, opting out of using an on-pack promotion on this occasion.
Using their iconic Maltesers Bunny product range as the representative for this Easter activation, under the URL, maltesers-bunnies-getaway-takeaway.co.uk, their promotional microsite for this particular prize draw featured playful motifs and product images. Of which, was the landing page for shoppers who scanned the QR code on the promotional display units.
For this promotion, participants could win various prizes with the purchase of two Napolina products. This particular activation runs from March to April of 2024 and the format is similar to previous promotions held by Napolina where the entry required two purchases of Napolina products.
Although this particular activation was in Morrisons, the same format was also seen in other retailers, one of which was ASDA. As seen in this particular ‘promo-hunt’ at Morrisons, the activation in-store featured suspended signs with promotional designs, compensating for the lack of on-pack promotion and dominating the endcap of its aisle.
The award-winning Irish whiskey brand offers shoppers and participants the chance to win a VIP trip to Ireland in celebration of their new bottle and look. Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day, the iconic whiskey brand opts for a sleeker rounder profile, using less glass in total, and is accompanied by a new twist-off cap.
Tullamore D.E.W has launched and announced their new bottle with OOH and in-store efforts, including the promotion packs with a bottle neck tag to catch shoppers’ attention to the activation.
The promotional bottleneck tag features a unique 8-digit code and a QR code leading to their promotional microsite, featuring their iconic Irish Wolfhound as seen on the label of their new packaging.
The promotion itself spans approximately 7 months, from February to September 2024.
Without picking up a promotional bottle, and inputting the link for the microsite, it becomes difficult to find the promotional website and enter the promotion. Given that Tullamore D.E.W’s main website, social media, and any existing digital does not point to the new promotion, Tullamore D.E.W is potentially missing out on a large audience of online shoppers or even those who shop at stores that don’t yet carry the new bottles. However, given that there are still quite a few months left of the promotion at the time of this insight article, perhaps shoppers and retailers can expect the new bottles with the promotional bottleneck tag to reach the shelves before the activation ends in September.
Running from September 2022 until the new year of 2023, Premier Foods had an on-pack promotion on their Ambrosia product lines. Unlike Ambrosia’s newer promotions and prize draws which are usually text-to-wins (TTWs), this promotion uses a microsite and an entry form to create a purchase necessary promotion.
Diving deeper into the promotional microsite, a few details became clear. This promotion was made over a year ago before the actual “Win 1000s of MOLEY cuddly toys” promotion in June 2021 and will likely remain active until the domain’s expiry date in June 2024. This would’ve provided a great opportunity for Ambrosia to create an ‘always-on’ microsite where the promotions would occasionally change but would still be a constant addition to their promotional strategy for their brand.
Given that the URL of the microsite uses a relatively neutral and broad name, i.e. ambrosiacompetition.co.uk, it provides Ambrosia with a strong opportunity to build their digital presence for their promotional activations. Seeing as Ambrosia has consistently held promotions, more specifically, text-to-win promotions which have their benefits, leveraging their microsite, particularly throughout their domain ownership could boast more and longer engagement periods from users.
Targeting their football fanbase and being an official FA Cup partner, Carling has hosted a promotion on their packs of Lager. The activation the insight team spotted was an on-pack promotion, running until the 1st of May which would be followed by a month-long wrap-up period for late prize draw entrants.
As Carling’s official partner, they have also previously produced activations to celebrate their collaboration. For example, in late October 2023, Carling produced limited edition FA Cup designs on their cans.
For dedicated and casual fans of football, prizes such as match tickets, merchandise, and meet-and-greets with players become high-value prizes, often outranking outright cash prizes which are the usual favoured promotional prizes for entrants.
Working with lastminute.com - the beer brand, Fosters has hit shop shelves with an on-pack promotion to push sales. Running from March until August 2024, participants have plenty of time to enter the prize draw with a 5-digit URN (unique reference number).
Previously, Fosters used a microsite to host their “La-Di-Dager” promotion in which special winning cans were hidden in a pack of Fosters, but this time round, the brand has opted to use a page on their main website to hold this promotion.
We encourage our readers to visit previous articles published by PromoNow to learn and read the research conducted for previous promotions, below are promotions that have both been included in a ‘Promotions Seen’ article and were spotted in Morrisons. To stay up-to-date and be the first to learn about a new PromoNow insight article, follow PromoNow’s LinkedIn page.
March 2024 has proven to be a strong month for both retailers and brands with several Easter and Mother's Day promotions and activations reaching retailer shelves, driving higher footfall to stores. This month's strong emphasis on family events and connection has been a opportunity to involve various age groups in a family to get involved and for brands to consolidate loyalty in customers by using their brands as a point of emotional connection for shoppers and their loved ones. Shoppers can expect to see more promotional displays and point-of-sale materials in retailers, enhancing their shopping experience, particularly in the food and drinks category. In the meantime, the insights team at PromoNow will continue monitor UK's biggest retailers and keep readers informed on brand promotions, retailer shopper marketings, and their various promotional strategies.
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