Marketing

Asda is known for two 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. Hattie Jacques featured in adverts for ASDA in the early 1980s. In the late 1980s, prior to the reintroduction of the tap pocket campaign, advertising for Asda had featured the Fairground Attraction song Perfect.

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In 2004, Sharon Osbourne was selected to be part of a new marketing campaign by Asda; her last advert was aired in August 2005. In the smiley face "rollback" campaign, also used in Wal-Mart advertisements, a CGI smiley face bounces 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 is challenged by competitors, especially Aldi.

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Currently in Asda advertising is a theme featuring singing children and the previous tap of the trouser pocket advertising was reduced to a double-tap on a stylized 'A', still producing the 'chinking' sound. This has included an advert during the 2006 FIFA World Cup featuring the England footballer Michael Owen in an advert with the children singing Vindaloo. The latest advertising campaign has done away with the rollback hook in favour of featuring celebrities Victoria Wood and Paul Whitehouse(amongst others) working as Asda employees.

Asda has been winner of the Grocer Magazine "Lowest Price Supermarket" Award for the past 11 years^[13], 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 ASA upheld the complaint^[14] 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. As a result Asda no longer cites itself as "Officially Britain's lowest priced supermarket", instead using "Winner: Britain's lowest price supermarket award".

For Christmas 2007 Asda reintroduced the "That's Asda price" slogan [4] as well as the infamous 'jingle' to some of its adverts although this was overshadowed by the celebrity endorsed "There's no place like Asda".

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 February 2008 focus on price comparisons between Asda and its rivals, using the "Why Pay More" slogan and old Dad's Army theme tune.

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