Sainsbury’s hunts agency for direct marketing brief

sainsbury.jpg 2Just 24 hours after revealing that its future lies in data-driven marketing, it has emerged that Sainsbury’s is now planning to hold talks with direct marketing agencies about its DM account.
The retailer appointed The Marketing Store to its promotional and shopper marketing work last year, while Tangible has run its financial services direct account since 2010.
However, unlike rival Tesco – which, in Havas Helia, has had a dedicated direct marketing agency for nearly 20 years – it has never appointed a business to handle its DM activity.
Its roster of agencies also includes ad agency AMV BBDO and digital shops AnalogFolk, Dare and Gravity Road, while it has also worked with Tullo Marshall Warren, AKQA, Big Mouth Media, Wax and Live & Breathe in the past.
In addition to direct marketing, Sainsbury’s is also understood to be looking for an agency to handle its social media account.
The move will see the company ramp up its marketing activity next year; over the past 12 months its spend has been minimal due to the ongoing supermarket price war and food deflation.
Yesterday (Wednesday), chief executive Mike Coupe revealed plans to ramp up its data strategy at the firm’s financial update. He claimed the move will “step us on again in the way that we personalise interactions with our customers.”
Coupe added: “We already think that we have a lot of customer knowledge and that we use that in a variety of different ways. But actually the next stage of the programme is to have what we would call a single customer view of our customers where we pull together all of our datasets to enable us to anticipate and fulfil our customers’ needs on a more personalised basis.”
Sainsbury’s said the company would not comment on its arrangements with marketing agencies.

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