Tesco Clubcard: Ten Years of Front-Page Value Leadership

For decades, Tesco has delivered market-leading deals on its weekly groceries. But with competition intensifying, Tesco needed a high-impact, agile, consistent communication platform to cut through the noise and promote weekly deals on a national scale.

Traditional short-burst promotional advertising no longer offered the visibility or longevity necessary to lead the national conversation around the best value for money. Tesco needed a format so unmissable and so culturally embedded that its deals would be viewed not merely as promotions but as national news.    

Approach

The big idea was to embed Tesco’s weekly offers directly into the nation’s daily news consumption. Step forward the weekly Tesco Clubcard Trade Partnership. In 2016, this pioneering collaboration with Reach and The Sun was born. An unprecedented long-term agreement, it allowed Tesco to own the front pages of key national and 30 regional newspapers both in print and online.

It was an iconic media space guaranteed to command attention, embedding Tesco’s weekly offers directly into the nation’s daily news consumption through a sustained, dominant presence. This transformed weekly deals into a recurring national event, positioning Tesco’s value message as “breaking news”.

Over time, as consumer behaviour shifted, the partnership evolved to focus more heavily on high-impact digital formats across major online news platforms. Prime placements such as app splashes, interscrollers and UK-targeted versions of news brands’ global sites ensured scale and adaptability. A flexible creative template enabled rapid, last-minute updates to highlight the strongest deals at critical trading moments.

Operational excellence underpinned the partnership’s success. For almost a decade, teams from EssenceMediacom, Tesco, Reach, and The Sun have collaborated weekly to deliver seamless execution across print and digital.

First-party Tesco data was used to create custom audience segments, enabling deeper insight and more refined targeting strategies. The mix of print and digital was continually adjusted to maintain effectiveness and efficiency, with investment flowing into new formats and additional audiences to sustain market dominance.

Now in its 10th year, this partnership not only consistently drives short-term sales but continues to be a leading performer among Tesco’s value-led campaigns. It boasts an impressive long-term ROI and is the strongest performer across Tesco’s value offer to date. Beyond financial returns, the collaboration significantly contributes to Tesco’s value perception, a crucial metric during the current socio-economic climate.

This advertiser has evolved over time from being very press-led to being a lot more digital, more data-driven, using first-party data and engagement responses to help develop future targeting, while still having front-page positioning to grab attention.

Sue Stephenson, UK marketing director