The Sauce – 23/04/2024

Welcome to ‘The Sauce’ – your weekly dollop of marketing news.

By Ashleigh Morris, our Content and Comms Lead.

Welcome to ‘The Sauce’ – your dollop of marketing news from the past week.

This week we’re talking about Lovehoney’s boundary-pushing sex toy ad, Screwfix’s latest TV ad and Dr. Martens’ new CEO.

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Lovehoney Pushes Boundaries in New Sex Toy Ad

How do you promote a product when you’re not allowed to show the product?

This is the challenge faced by sex toy company Lovehoney. Due to advertising restrictions on the promotion of sex toys, Lovehoney can’t show their products in their ads… so their marketing team had to get creative!

Their latest campaign ‘Not a Sex Toy’ was created with agency Boldspace, and features common household objects and innuendo to promote their brand in the OOH space.

At Awesomesauce we love to talk about customer insights, and this campaign was based on insights from asking the British public what they use instead of sex toys… vegetables and electric toothbrushes apparently – each to their own!

We love the creativity here and how Lovehoney has challenged the advertising restrictions. The new ads come a year after Lovehoney had an ad banned by the ASA. It featured a ball gag and the words ‘Silence is golden, Harry’ – timed around the release of Prince Harry’s book ‘Spare’.

We hope Lovehoney aren’t gagged by the ASA this time around, and look forward to seeing what they get up to next!

At Awesomesauce we love to talk about customer insights, and this campaign was based on insights from asking the British public…

Screwfix Launches New Ad to Encourage App Check-In

Screwfix has launched its latest TV ad which aims to encourage customers to check-in via the app as they arrive to pick up their ‘Click and Collect’ orders.

The ad features workers running out of sealant and ordering online before rushing off to collect it, using the app to notify the store they have arrived.

It aims to speed up the time it takes for busy workers to collect their orders, versus checking in using an in-store method.

While we’re not huge fans of the ad itself, it’s great to see Screwfix identifying a customer-need and working to address it and improve the customer experience, in this case by speeding up collections for busy customers. The initiative is sure to benefit Screwfix too – improving the user-experience is likely to help with customer retention, while additional app downloads will encourage users to return to Screwfix channels and provide additional targeting opportunities.

But we can’t help but question if the time-saving benefit is significant enough to encourage people to download the app, and if it justifies the creation of a costly ad campaign…

However, we love to see brands identifying customer pain points and using new strategies to address them, so kudos to Screwfix for trying something new.

We love to see brands identifying customer pain points and using new strategies to address them, so kudos to Screwfix for trying something new.

Dr. Martens Promotes Marketer to CEO

Iconic footwear brand Dr. Martens has announced chief brand officer Ije Nwokorie will be promoted to CEO, effective from next year.

Nwokorie will replace Kenny Wilson, who will leave the company before the end of March 2025. The move comes just two months after Nwokorie joined the business as chief brand officer. He previously worked for Apple Retail.

Nwokorie was hired to help with the company’s marketing focus as the brand aimed to make its marketing “the cleanest it’s ever been in terms of communicating with customers”. He is currently responsible for global marketing, product and setting the brand vision, strategy and direction.

At Awesomesauce we’re big fans of Dr. Martens’ marketing (check out The Sauce from October 2023 where we look at their Made Strong campaign). The brand has always placed a strong focus on marketing which has seen them survive changing fashion trends and consumer habits since their launch in 1947.

We’re impressed by Dr. Martens’ marketing-led approach to the business by appointing a marketer as CEO. Whereas some companies see marketing teams working in silos, by appointing a marketer to lead the business, Dr. Martens are taking an innovative approach to ensuring long-term safeguarding of their brand and strategy.

We’d love to see more brands taking a marketing-led approach and integrating marketing within the wider business.  

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Contact us on hello@awesomesaucemarketing.co.uk to find out how we can support your business with a client-centred marketing approach – building trust and loyalty.

You can check out previous editions of ‘The Sauce’ here. 

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