What A Proper Ad Campaign Oughta Be

Repco: Removing shame and passive-aggressive spending from auto accessory retail. Image: Sweded.

In 2007, with the Bunnings juggernaut looming, Home Timber and Hardware had to take action. Bunnings had gained a reputation and a chunk of market share by presenting itself as an outdoor version of IKEA where lovey young couples went for a shopping adventure, rather than a place for blokes to pick up some nails. With sausage sizzles and low prices, it was a clever trick.

So Home Timber and Hardware got Rusty and Sandy, those two loveable stop-motion mongrels who commented on purchases, to start referring to their chain, a little snidely, as the proper hardware store. The ads, by Melbourne agency CHE, resulted in a four per cent increase in unprompted brand awareness for Home.

This month CHE launched a new round of TVCs to rub it in. One of the ads features the dogs lamenting a shopper who comes to Home to replace a cheap hammer she bought that fell apart and hurt her little fluffy dog. Another emphasises the customer support that just doesn’t come from the glazed-eyed teenagers who stock shelves at hardware hangers like, say, Bunnings (also, is that Wally Meanie buying the drill?).

Super Cheap Auto had an 8.7% growth in profit in the first half of the last financial year, whereas Repco, while still in the Top 20 retailers, posted a loss. So what can Repco do to stop its own bulk cheap competitor? Brand itself as the “proper” auto store.

I’ve long been confused by Super Cheap Auto’s marketing strategy, which seems to emphasise the fact that any time you visit the store you’re bound to return with enormous piles of junk at low low prices, the accumulation of which will further embitter your harridan wife. They’re pitching the same idea as that which has targeted women in the past: “Shopping is a pastime, not a necessary evil!” Bunnings revels in the idea of visiting the store as recreation, but Super Cheap Auto exclusively pitches to browbeaten suburban husbands.

Now Repco is getting all paternal with car accessory buyers, insisting it won’t just sell “anything” to you. The new ad is embedded on the website, top left. Even for a television commercial, it’s pretty unsubtle. Here’s a list of things that an auto store “oughta be” according to the ad: “there from the start”; “a place where I share my knowledge to get the job done”; a place which “should know which one is right for me”; and which “should understand more than just cars”.

The final line is the kicker, with a responsibly greying father in a flannie topping up his butter-wouldn’t-melt daughter’s car with oil and proclaiming, “I wouldn’t put just anything in the car for her” before cutting to the same man in a bright uniform saying, “and I wouldn’t sell just anything to you.”

It’s hard to pretend that the workers at Home and Repco actually give a shit about our renos or lemons but there are consumers who desire a more authentic retail experience after routinely being abandoned in a maze of fluorescent-lit aisles. There might be bigger profits in appealing to expertise. Yet if all Australians care about are rock-bottom prices, we can’t really expect stores to care about us.

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