Lidl pokes fun at Sainsbury's 50p challenge gaffe

Sainsbury's has had a tough week. On Tuesday, one store accidentally displayed a poster designed to inspire staff to get customers to spend 50p more on every shopping trip - branded as the 50p challenge. The poster went viral, attracting widespread mirth online. Now Lidl is rubbing it in: launching its own 50p challenge - to help customers save as many 50ps as possible.

The original poster was intended to be displayed in staff-only areas, and was part of a drive to boost Sainsbury's sluggish sales. However on Romford Road in Stratford, staff put the poster in the window. One customer tweeted the poster, and it went viral - being retweeted more than 5,000 times.

Now Lidl has put adverts in two national newspapers which bear a striking resemblance to the design of the Sainsbury's poster, but encourage customers to save 50p rather than spend extra.
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Tough week for Sainsbury's
Sainsbury's is understandably concerned about sales. In Wednesday's results announcement it said sales in the previous three months (excluding fuel) had fallen 2.8%. It was the third period in a row that the supermarket had announced falling sales, and as a result the share price fell to a six-year low. In one day, £1.2 million was wiped off the combined value of Sainsbury's, Tesco and Morrisons.

The discounters meanwhile are laughing. This week Aldi announced that sales had risen 36% in 2013 and pre-tax profits were up 65%.

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Poster gaffes
Perhaps Sainsbury's new Chief Executive, Mike Coupe, can take some comfort from the fact that Sainsbury's isn't the first company to have been embarrassed by a poster.

The Co-operative was memorably humiliated by its adverts when it put up posters back in May advertising May Bank Holiday deals "Because the weekend a third longer". It didn't take long before social media informed them that their maths was awry, and that the weekend was actually 50% longer.

Tesco has also had its own poster gaffe. In March this year it was advertising its £1 milk with a photograph of cows. Unfortunately for them, twitter users in some farming communities spotted that the picture was of beef cows - reared for their meat. It was forced to pull all the posters immediately.

TSB suffered a similar fate. Last September, it launched its new branches, with posters in each area celebrating a return to local banking and mentioning the area by name. The idea was to show how in touch with the community it was - but it backfired in Ashtead when it spelled the name of the village incorrectly - as Ashstead.

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