Advertiser: ALDI
Agency: Starcom
Winner: Most effective campaign
Challenge
For ALDI, return on investment is the ultimate media proof point. However, 2023 performance data revealed diminishing returns over the festive season. Press remained a high performing channel, yet ROI had dipped.
What’s more, competitors Lidl and Sainsbury’s were delivering the highest impact per pound spent. Heading into Christmas 2024, ALDI faced a complex challenge: refine the press strategy to regain efficiency and maximise ROI while ensuring ALDI’s storytelling cuts through in an increasingly saturated festive landscape. News brands remained non-negotiable within ALDI’s media mix. The challenge was to ensure every title, every placement, and every format was working harder and delivering messages that resonate against shopper segments.
Approach
ALDI’s econometric and performance modelling provided a roadmap for optimisation. In print, brand and range ads outperformed price-led executions on ROI. Larger formats delivered greater returns than fractionals. Key audience insights showed that ABC1 indexed at 85% in quality titles, 65% in mid-market, and 35% in the popular titles. ALDI needed to reduce the volume of tactical price-led ads in press, elevate creative and media formats to hero the ‘Specially Selected’ range, and match messaging with context to maximise relevance. This was about treating news brands not just as reach platforms, but as environments where brand and audience could connect with precision.
Using TGI and PAMCo data to understand readership strengths, ALDI collaborated with Mail Metro Media, News UK, Reach and The Guardian to roll out the new approach, focused on tailored placements with the right messages in right moments. Key executions included front-of-book placements in core titles to lead the festive conversation and maximise early consideration, plus contextually relevant supplements featuring ALDI’s products to build credibility and quality perceptions. Tailored, weekly tenancies across demographic touchpoints in The Sun, Daily Mail, Metro and The i Paper sought to maximise flexibility, reach and engagement.
Results
This precision approach to planning worked. The campaign’s success was highlighted in ALDI’s strongest festive trading results to date: £1.6 billion in sales in the four weeks to Christmas Eve — a 3.4% year-on-year uplift. Sales of seasonal Christmas products grew by 10%. Moreover, the ‘Specially Selected’ range surged by 12%, highlighting the growing consumer appetite for quality and ALDI’s ability to deliver it.
Econometric modelling showed that premium news brand placements delivered the strongest ROI, driving incremental reach, sales growth, and reinforcing ALDI’s positioning as a retailer of high-quality, great-value products. By shifting from broad tactical messaging to targeted premium storytelling, ALDI harnessed the strengths of news brands to deliver record Christmas sales and category growth.
