Marketing
Asda is known for memorable famous marketing campaigns. In the "Asda price" campaign, customers tap their trouser pocket twice, producing a 'chinking' sound as the coins that Asda's low prices have supposedly left in their pockets knock together. The pocket tap ads were launched in 1977 and over the next 30 years a range of celebrities have been "tappers", including Julie Walters, Michael Owen and sitcom actor Leonard Rossiter. In 1980 Carry On actress Hattie Jacques appeared in the advert as a school crossing patrol officer.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, prior to the reintroduction of the tap pocket campaign, advertising for Asda had featured the Fairground Attraction song Perfect. In 2004, Sharon Osbourne was selected to be part of a new marketing campaign by Asda; her last advert was aired in August 2005.
From 1990 to 1992, they were the sponsors of Sheffield Wednesday F.C. during arguably their two most successful seasons in modern times – when they won promotion from the Football League Second Division as Football League Cup winners and finished third in the Football League First Division (last season before the creation of the FA Premier League).
In the smiley face "rollback" campaign, also used in Wal-Mart advertisements, a CGI smiley face bounced from price tag to price tag, knocking them down as customers watch. The focus of these campaigns is to portray Asda as the most affordable supermarket in the country, a claim that was challenged by competitors, especially Aldi. In 2006, Asda advertising was themed around singing children and the slogan "More for you for less", and the previous tap of the trouser pocket advertising was reduced to a double-tap on a stylised 'A', still producing the 'chinking' sound. This included an advert during the 2006 FIFA World Cup featuring the England football player Michael Owen in an advert with the children singing Vindaloo. In 2007, the advertising campaign abandoned the rollback hook in favour of featuring celebrities including Victoria Wood and Paul Whitehouse working as Asda employees.
For Christmas 2007, Asda reintroduced the "That's Asda price" slogan as well as the famous 'jingle' to some of its adverts, this can also be heard on its in-store radio station 'Asda FM'.
Starting in 2008, Asda has been returning to its roots and is now re-focusing on price with its new "Why Pay More?" campaign both on TV and in stores. Current Asda TV commercials in April 2009 focus on price comparisons between Asda and its rivals, using information from "MySupermarket" to suggest that Asda is Britain's most affordable supermarket. The music being used in these adverts is the Billy Childish version of the classic Dad's Army theme tune. The old Asda jingle is not included in these, but appeared in a 2008 Christmas advert. Asda returned to the traditional pocket tap adverts in March/April 2009, with the slogan "Saving You Money Every Day."
Asda has been winner of The Grocer magazine "Lowest Price Supermarket" Award for the past 14 years, and uses this to promote itself across the UK. In August 2005, rival supermarket chain Tesco challenged Asda's ability to use the claim that it was the cheapest supermarket in the country, by complaining to the Advertising Standards Agency. The A.S.A upheld the complaint and ordered Asda to stop using it, citing that The Grocer magazine survey was based on limited and unrepresentative evidence as it examined the price of just 33 products, and that the survey did not study low-cost supermarkets such as Aldi, and that their price checker, My Supermarket, doesn't include Morrisons, which was mentioned a few times. As a result Asda no longer cites itself as "Officially Britain's lowest priced supermarket", instead using "Winner: Britain's lowest price supermarket award".
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