Why Bunnings, BWS and Aldi are masters of effective communication

There are many elements that must come together to create great retail. Among the most crucial are not location, range, sales, store layouts, delivery, competitive prices, or even engaging staff. Instead, it’s how retailers package these components into a retail experience and effectively communicate these benefits to their audience.

Great communications are the secret sauce for retailers. Elevating the good, to great to iconic. A retailer’s retail communications framework is as important and distinct as brand architecture. But. there are not many brands that get it right. Brand and retail are not mutually exclusive. Great retail communications should build your brand and drive sales. 

Whilst CX has become a huge buzzword I prefer to champion RX: The Retail Experience. The right retail communications framework will house this experience, elevating the best of your retail and creating new revenue streams.

For brand teams at retailers, I always champion a shift of mindset. Think like a brand. But act like a retailer. It sounds simple but workshopping this approach with brand teams is a huge unlock for their retail potential. 

So, what does a great retail communication framework look like? I’ve pulled out my dream team of Australian retail to exemplify.

Your framework should start with the CVP, your Customer Value Proposition. In retail this should encapsulate a functional benefit most likely one of your USPs and ideally communicate value. It also needs to resonate with your audience emotionally. Emotion beats function every time in retail.

Retailers that incorporate emotion into their CVP should ideally get audiences thinking (and feeling) and promise an elevated experience. Emotion can be woven into various aspects of the retail journey such as staff, a defining gesture, range and much more. For my money Bunnings is one of Australia’s best retailers and the iconic: ‘Lowest prices are just the beginning’ absolutely nailed their CVP. 

Your promotion vehicles are next in the retail comms framework. These can take multiple forms but will ladder up to the CVP, taking the proposition and turning it into a shopper action. These promotional vehicles can take different forms. For example, they can be brand-building sales events; exclusive product offers for trial; help own key trading periods; or even help change behaviour to address an identified opportunity or barrier.

Here are some great examples of promotional vehicles that ladder up to a CVP. Firstly, Aldi Special Buys. A brand-building, traffic-driving promotional vehicle that cuts through culture. Ostensibly as a sales event, it does so much more for Aldi. Iconic and driven by earned media. Win-win.

Secondly, exclusives. These can take the form of co-labs, ranging or promos. They may be for a limited time for short-term impact or longer-term but they must pay back up to the CVP. An example is Better Beer and their exclusive launch and range with Endeavour Group. The Inspired Unemployed, creators of Better Beer, offer an outsized share of earned noise and the exclusive ranging pays back in both traffic and sales for both BWS and Dan Murphy’s. 

Thirdly, it’s crucial to identify the key trading periods you need to win and shape your promotional vehicle to capture them. By structuring promotions to appeal to supplier brands as funding partners, retailers can create powerful, self-sustaining campaigns.

BWS’s ‘100 Days of Summer’ effectively captures the high-demand summer season, with supplier investment covering campaign costs. Developing self-funded promotional vehicles like this not only boosts sales but also strengthens your brand and enhances the customer experience, smart stuff.

Finally, a promotion vehicle that shapes behaviour the way you want it based on an opportunity or barrier. The all-time classic example here is Orange Wednesdays. Orange, a mobile phone retailer in the UK had a retention problem. They identified Wednesday as the least popular day to go to the cinema.

The value of a single customer retained for Orange was far higher than the cost of a cinema ticket so they did a cut-price deal with cinemas and offered 2-for-1 cinema visits.

The cost of the tickets was tiny but the perceived value was huge and their retention issue was addressed as customers felt Orange was giving them something back. Not only that, the promotion became so iconic it also became a recruitment tool and as a by-product saw Wednesday become the most popular cinema night in the UK for the 12 years the promotion was supported.

The upshot here is, if you get your retail communications framework right, it can significantly improve your retail mix. Putting you on the path to iconic retail experience.

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