ASDA has consistently featured a varied range of promotional displays in their stores to support in-store brand activity and shopper activations. With the return of their ‘Rollback’ campaign, much of the point-of-sale material focuses on promoting the Rollback to customers and is seen with various promotional displays.
Many off-pack promotions spotted in stores were supported more heavily with in-store point-of-sale displays and promotional materials as though to compensate for the lack of on-pack promotion. Whilst several on-pack promotions still had promotional displays including free-standing-display units and overhead signs, there were significantly more promotional displays dedicated to off-pack promotions.
There were also quite a few brand takeovers within the aisles and was one of the few areas accompanied by overhead signs outside of the end-cap area where there were two converging signs over the end of the aisle. Several of these overhead signs were meant to support ASDA’s Rollback campaign, but a few featured brand promotions.
As usual, there were also several free-standing display units in the store, particularly around and close to the checkout and kiosk areas. They were also prominent adjacent and close to the end of aisles where there’s heavy footfall, ranging from featuring brand promotions to more generic branded displays.
Most often, the sides of the FSDUs were the primary way that any brand promotions were spotted. With these display units at eye level and featuring large and engaging copy and designs, shoppers are most likely to spot these promotional displays first before they even spot the actual promotional packs. This makes FSDU a brilliant tool for attracting shopper attention to both on and off-pack promotions featured in stores.
February is the month for Valentine’s-themed brand promotions. At ASDA, we saw several promotions from brands made to capitalise on the occasion and reach shoppers with their in-store efforts.
This promotion is a brand partnership from PepsiCo-owned brand, POPWORKS with the romcom movie, ‘Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy’, distributed by Universal Pictures and StudioCanal.
Bridget Jones has seen much success over the years as a novel series and movie franchise. The latest film was released on the 13th of February, just a day before Valentine's Day, the beloved romcom has been cleverly supported by various marketing media, including shopper promotions and activations from a few FMCG/CPG brands, including POPWORKS.
This particular brand promotion by POPWORKS features an on-pack redesign on their ‘Sweet & Salty’ and ‘Sweet BBQ’ flavours, which are also featured in prime locations in-store with strong point-of-sale displays including freestanding display units and shelf-barkers.
POPWORKS uses a unique code to verify purchases within the sign-up phase of the promotion. The instant win prize draw is hosted on PepsiCo’s always-on promotional website, ‘Joy by PepsiCo’ which features a variety of prize promotions from PepsiCo-owned brands.
Alongside the prize promotion, this particular partnership between POPWORKS and Bridget Jones has been supported on social media through both organic and paid posts, including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. For this promotion, POPWORKS has also hosted an exclusive pre-release of the film to drive reach and awareness on social channels alongside PR, digital, and point-of-sale marketing to improve reach and excitement about this partnership.
The dessert brand, GÜ, is another brand in FMCG/CPG that has partnered with the new Bridget Jones film with an on-pack promotion, which was spotted in stores, including ASDA. The brand has redesigned some of the packaging for its core flavours to feature the new pink box, featuring relevant promotional copy and images, in the flash design with the movie poster, featuring Renée Zellweger, who portrays Bridget Jones in the films.
The prize draw promotion is available on a promotional page on GÜ’s website, at the URL, gudesserts.com/pages/bridget-jones-valentines. Seeing as the promotion doesn’t require any purchase to enter, it includes a form page without any proof of purchase verification and follows a straightforward process.
To support this promotion, GÜ has also launched sampling and OOH advertising including a mirror billboard to support engagement and interactivity. On social media and in an email to its newsletter subscribers, the sampling and shopper activation was announced and encouraged Londoners to visit and engage with the promotional pop-up event.
In celebration of Valentine’s Day, beer brand, Hobgoblin set up free-standing display units (FSDU) in stores with branded Valentine's Day cards.
These cards were part of a Valentine’s ‘gift-with-purchase’ promotion and were free with the purchase of a pack of Hobgoblin beer and featured the brand’s Goblin mascot.
This off-pack promotion exclusive to ASDA is a Valentine’s themed promotion, offering ‘ date night vouchers in the prize pool. This promotion is supported by several point-of-sale displays including aisle fins and free-standing display units only in ASDA stores.
The in-store promotional displays feature French maître d'hôtel, Fred Sirieix, also known for being a UK TV personality, featured on shows like First Dates and BBC Two's Million Pound Menu.
For Valentine's, this in-store promotion is just one of many activations by the brand to entice audiences with a seasonally relevant activation. For the Valentine’s season, Knorr has also collaborated with Ann Summers and again, Fred Sirieix to promote their ‘Knorrplay’ Limited-Edition ‘Aphrodisiac’ Stock Pots for Valentine’s Day. They’ve also collaborated with a few influencers for a strong paid social media campaign to support their limited edition packs.
Whilst not exclusive to ASDA, this campaign was also supported by a brand promotion which gave away 230 limited-edition pots and an in-store sampling experience at the flagship Ann Summers store in London. At the activation point, the limited edition Knorr stock-pots were given away as well as accompanying recipes for shoppers to try for themselves.
There are several promotions with ASDA as the promoter or with ASDA as the exclusive retailer for a promotion. The promotions often do not have an on-pack design, instead, often rely on off-pack means such as in-store promotional displays or digital efforts to bring the promotion to the attention of shoppers.
Unilever-owned brand, Pot Noodle reaches ASDA shop shelves with their King Pot Cash Prizes promotion which was run by Pot Noodles but exclusively for ASDA purchases.
The promotion is available for entry at the promotional page, potnoodle.com/Asda-Win-1000-Every-Day-Scan-to-win.html which features a straightforward form with one of the fields asking participants to share what they’d do with the winnings.
In-store, the promotion was supported by promotional displays including shelf stoppers and barkers with entry instructions - encouraging shoppers to pause and enter the promotion for themselves.
Ariel has partnered with Peter Crouch for their ‘Big One’ campaign which has an accompanying prize draw available for purchases of a pack of Ariel ‘The Big One’ pods.
The promotion is hosted on supersavvyme.co.uk at the promotional page supersavvyme.co.uk/enter-ariel-thebigone-asda-competition where participants can enter by filling in a short survey for the chance to “win a meet and greet with Peter Crouch for your football team”.
With a promotional microsite at tetleycuppasofcash.co.uk, this instant win prize draw promotion is an on-pack promotion found in-store.
This Tetley brand promotion features receipt validation in the forms to ensure that all entrants have made a purchase, following the initial entry, participants are given an OTP to their phone number to join the promotion.
For the instant win portion, there are “up to 30,000 x £100 instant win prizes available to be won” and from additional terms listed in their T&Cs, there’s an algorithmic winning moment mechanic used to distribute the instant prizes. This means all 30,000 cash prizes will be given away only if a certain number of entries are made. There’s a 1 in 100 chance of winning for this one in particular. This means there needs to be 3,000,000 entries for all 30,000 winning moments prizes to be claimed.
Mini-Cheddars has reached shop shelves with their on-pack promotion. Utilising several promotional mechanics including instant win, winning tokens, and prize draws to make the promotional shopper activation all the more engaging.
This ‘Find A Wedge’ prize promotion is featured on minicheddarsuk.com and requires a unique reference code found on-pack to verify purchases for each entry. In total, 10 wedges are to be found as the winning token in promotional packs.
This on-pack promotion for selected Premier Foods products has been spotted in stores. A brand collaboration between Penguin Books and Premier Foods’ Ambrosia, Mr Kipling, and Angel Delight which is available at the promotional microsite winbookbundles.com.
The book bundles offered in this promotional pack are all a part of the Puffin Classics book bundle. Puffin Books is celebrating 85 years this year and has worked with Premier Foods to celebrate its anniversary - the long-standing children’s book publishing brand has also been running prize promotions on its channels.
The brand promotion and collaboration with Premier Foods uses a prize draw promotional mechanic and ends the promotion with a wrap-up draw which entrants who have not already won, will automatically be entered into.
A free-standing display unit for Premier Foods and their brand partnership with Puffin Books
Alongside the promotional packs across the three featured brands, this prize promotion also was supported in-store with point-of-sale promotional display materials, including FSDUs.
Following an extremely successful brand collaboration with the Pac-Man franchise, Oreo has returned with yet another brand collaboration, this time with ‘A Minecraft Movie’, due to release in theatres 4th April 2025. As part of the promotion, Oreo uses augmented reality within the promotional journey for a more engaging and interactive experience via gamification. The experience requires a motion sensor so is only available on mobile devices.
There’s also a way for shoppers to enter the promotion with their barcode instead of playing the augmented reality experience. This portion of the promotion is an instant win wherein participants who don’t win anything are automatically rolled over to the prize draw portion of the promotion. For the instant win portion of the promotion, 50% of entries during the promotional period will randomly be able to access a daily prize basket - if there are still prizes left over during the day, entrants will win a prize. If no entry is made, the prizes from the basket will roll over to the next day.
Both the gamified augmented reality experience and the main promotional entry form can be found at taste-play-win.oreo.eu The promotional page itself, features various visuals from the movie. Overall, the promotion is supported by an on-pack design with unique limited edition designs on the face of the cookie as well as OOH support including paid ads and socials.
Bisto has partnered with Aardman Animation’s Wallace & Gromit to bring shoppers a new promotion using both a winning token mechanism and a classic weekly draw, facilitated by a form found on the promotional microsite, winwithbisto.co.uk and will be followed up by a wrap-up draw. Prizes feature various Wallace & Gromit-themed merchandise
.
The grand prize is available only to one of three shoppers who find a unique Feathers McGraw winning ticket in their promotions packs. The prize is “a round, one-carat, brilliant cut, blue lab grown diamond worth approximately £1,500”. The prize is a clear nod to the diamond heist by Feathers McGraw in the films, Wallace & Gromit: The Wrong Trousers and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
This brand partnership and on-pack promotion is supported with in-store POS and social media activity to boost visibility. This collaboration also brings about a creative experiential activation by Splendid Communications to create a ‘Vengeance Most Fowl’ inspired experience with a floating ‘gravy-boat’ restaurant in Paddington to pay homage to the canal boat chase scene in the finale of the film. Alongside an inspired menu, visitors could also see various sculptures of the characters and playful recreations and mirrorings of the film.
This on-pack promotion by tea brand, PG Tips utilises unique 8-digit reference numbers to validate purchases of each entry. The promotion consists of both instant win and prize draw promotional mechanics to improve short and long-term engagements and is available for entry at the promotional microsite pgtipsluckydips.co.uk/.
The promotion saw additional support outside of the on-pack aspect through in-store POS materials and displays as well as social media activity to get shoppers engaged and into stores for a promotional pack.
“We’re thrilled to kick off 2025 by investing in Britain’s mornings with our ‘Start Your Day the PG Way’ 360 campaign! Our research shows just how vital that first cup of PG Tips is to start the day right, and we’re excited to celebrate this moment with shoppers across the UK.”
Eleanor Barker, Lipton Teas & Infusions, UK and Ireland CMO
Available to enter at purina.co.uk/felixwin, this promotion by Felix uses both a winning token mechanic, featuring a ‘Golden Paw’ ticket in winning packs and a prize draw available to all shoppers who’ve purchased a participating promotional pack.
Winning token promotions such as this one always evoke a sense of excitement in shoppers and become a highly engaging experience that encourages entry and repeat purchases for the chance of buying the winning pack.
In stores, this promotion was also supported by point-of-sale displays including floor decals within aisles.
Whilst the promotional packs were available in store, this promotion by Kinder, at winwithnatoons.com, doesn’t go live until the 3rd of March. Expect to see this promotion featured in next month’s edition of Promotions Seen.
Bonne Maman has an off-pack promotion across FSDUs in store for the upcoming Pancake Day. Found on the promotional page, bonnemaman.co.uk/competition/pancake-experience, this promotion offers entrants the chance to win 14 prizes in total through a prize draw promotional mechanic. This prize draw offers a “week-long family holiday to picturesque Brittany, France, or a fun weekend pancake experience in the charming village of Olney, Bucks”. Both ‘prize-places’ a nod to pancake day with Brittany being the birthplace of crepes and Olney being the “home of the oldest British pancake day race!”
Bonne Maman are also hosting a social media promotion on their Instagram and Facebook in anticipation for Pancake Day. Entrants will have to tag Bonne Maman’s social media account and include a photo of their ‘Pancake Day creation’ to be entered into the promotion. Whilst it initially seems like a skill-based promotion, winners are determined via “a random number generator.”
To find out how your brand can run promotional shopper activations with an end-to-end platform. Speak to one of our experts at no cost. Consider using the PromoNow platform. Speak with a platform consultant at +44 (0)20 380 555 38 or email [email protected] to learn more.
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