Woolworths 2018: ‘Home for Christmas’

The ad above is for Australian supermarket chain Woolworths, which also owns New Zealand’s Countdown supermarket chain (whose Christmas ad I already shared). Woolworths and Coles, Australia’s second-largest supermarket chain by locations, control about 80% of Australia’s grocery market, making them a duopoly, though less so than New Zealand has, with only two chains.

The ad is very different from the one for their New Zealand operations. While both use lighthearted situational comedy, the New Zealand commercial seems to carry more urgency than the Australian version does, though the way Christmas is experienced in the two countries isn’t all that different in frenzy levels. That’s merely interesting, but not important. I doubt the company was trying to “say” anything by the way the commercials were made, but were merely making commercials that appealed to different markets. As they should.

Personally, I’m just glad that we in New Zealand didn’t get a reheated Australian ad used here. Plus, I still get to see how Australians are marketed to, and see how different companies in different countries do their marketing. That’s the point of this annual series of posts, after all.