UnderCurrent is impressed, if a little confused, to report that Appliances Online is now embarking on its first major above the line campaign to promote its web-based electrical emporium. The new campaign includes TV, radio and social media elements and stars a talking fish, an anguished angler and a deliveryman with the power to glide across concrete and make refrigerators appear at the snap of his fingers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whxA2108wlQ
At the centre of this campaign is the tagline “Legendary Service”, which UnderCurrent prefers to Harvey Norman’s somewhat accusatory “Shop with Confidence”, and emphasises that even when completing computer commerce, there need not accept a compromise on service.
“The campaign marks Appliances Online’s first major advertising push so it’s an exciting move for our business,
said Appliance Online’s owner and Winning Group CEO John Winning. “I founded Appliances Online in 2005 and expansion has occurred at every level of the business despite relatively low brand awareness.”
According to an article on industry rag Mumbrella, Appliances Online has entered into partnerships with UnderCurrent’s fellow merchants of lowbrow swill, Triple M’s Grill Team, as well as august TV show of repute and UnderCurrent’s most recommended cultural experience, Channel Nine’s Big Brother.
Launching this marketing assault is yet more evidence of the Winning Group’s opaque yet undeniably extant ambitions. The recent purchase of Rick Hart’s inchoate Kitchen HQ network in Perth has added a bi-coastal element to Winning’s bricks and mortar presence, while UnderCurrent’s spies reliably inform it that high ranking Winning Group team members were recently spotted in Adelaide: could the purchase of another existing retail brand be in the pipeline?
From his above quotation, it sounds to UnderCurrent like Winning is actively looking to raise Appliances Online’s brand awareness and, in turn, its turnover (if not profitability), which has been known to be a tactic from senior management looking to present a business in its best light prior to putting it on the market. Winning has resolutely denied any such plans in the past. If buyers of the business are not being courted, buyers from the business certainly are. This campaign is sure to steal sales away from Appliances Online’s more frugal rivals, so UnderCurrent awaits with baited (that’s a fishing joke) breath, to hear their thoughts on this campaign.
In the meantime, with online appliance retailer broadly regarded as being fought on price terms, UnderCurrent thinks praise is in order for Appliances Online, for choosing to focus not on price or value but on solving a problem, even if it still can’t bring itself to praise the creative geniuses from VCCP for this effort: talking fish is always one step too far!