Settling into her new role as Asda chief customer officer, Newsworks Awards 2025 chair of judges Rachel Eyre sets out her priorities for how much supermarkets can pack a marketing punch in a column for The Media Leader
With the life of a supermarket marketer driven by the sector’s ‘always on’ mentality, Eyre believes the best brands are successful because of their deep knowledge of their customers and their agility to meet shoppers’ needs meaningfully.
However, she also states the key to delivering this agility is through a “grounded, consistent marketing strategy”. She writes: “Purposeful innovation is always welcome, but getting the basics right is the key to building memorable, successful campaigns — ones that make a positive difference to both customers’ lives and supermarkets’ profitable sales and market share.”
In Eyre’s experience, two priorities sit at the top of the agenda when communicating with customers: reach and effectiveness. This makes choosing the right medium vital. In her capacity as Newsworks Awards 2025 chair of judges, Eyre puts news brands under the microscope. She writes: “Our fragmented media ecosystem means we increasingly have to challenge established truths. News brands are often touted as pillars of supermarkets’ long-term marketing strategies, but do they still cut the mustard?”
She ticks off both priorities, mentioning news brands’ daily reach of 24 million readers and looking back at key Asda campaigns involving news brands such as Christmas 2022’s ‘Buddy the Elf’ and 2024’s interactive ‘Wine Atlas’ partnership to demonstrate effectiveness for the supermarket’s bottom line.
However, Eyre does not shy away from innovation where it adds to an effective campaign. She points to Asda’s multiplatform partnership with Mail Metro Media, including the joint creation of its Family Matters TikTok channel — a trusted space for Daily Mail consumers on social media.
“That’s the final piece of the puzzle”, she writes. “Brands cannot hope to build relationships with their customers in environments they don’t trust. What makes news brands so valuable is that the trust their readers have in them creates a halo effect around advertising in that environment, whether print or digital. In short, trusted news brands help produce trusted advertising — whatever the platform”.
Read Rachel Eyre’s full column for The Media Leader
