I have always been a proponent of using themes for the cover page of weekly ads. In my view, the purpose of the weekly ad is to attract new ad readers and new customers to the store. The purpose of attracting new customers is an important distinction, since most consumers who read weekly ads; tend to read only those of their primary food store.

The supermarket industry’s marketing and advertising activities deal almost exclusively with what works today and almost never with what’s going to work tomorrow.

Too few companies run research to determine what their entire market place will be like in three years? In five years? And very few are committed to a vision that basically says, “We truly believe we know where this industry is going. We know what the leader will look like, sound like, think like, and be like in five years, and we know something else. We’re going to be that leader!

The primary goal of effective advertising is to attract an audience and motivate them to action. The goal is to drive customer traffic. The goal is to differentiate your store and your ad from your competitors and to always support your stores strategic position. Effective ads do all of these things. The result is advertising that not only achieves the short-term goals of increased sales and customer count, but advertising that becomes the building blocks of tomorrow’s success and prosperity as well. Advertising store attributes often pays off in profitability even when it doesn’t immediately increase sales. It reinforces a stores differential status from competitors and reinforces many past and present experiences with satisfied customers. Indeed, image is often the only basis of comparison between similar but different alternatives.