Aldi is stepping up efforts to make sure customers know it stocks quality Australian-made products with a new television ad released this week, in a move seen to be an attempt to further increase its competitiveness.
A joint creation between the Australian Made Campaign and the Buchanan Group, the ad starts out with an image of an Australian-made symbol overlaid over images of a farm and the words: “Most people would be surprised with how many Australian-made products there are in Aldi stores”.
The 30-second ad, which contains no less than seven references to ‘Australia’ and ‘Aussie’, features Westacre Australian tasty cheese and The Olive Tree’s olive oil.
It finishes with an Aldi supermarket worker saying, “that’s why we stock it at Aldi, Aldi supports Aussie products because Australians deliver great quality”.
A spokesperson for the Australian Made Campaign told SmartCompany the ad is the first in a series.
“The Australian Made Campaign is proud to partner with the Buchanan Group to create an advertising platform dedicated to increasing sales of genuine Aussie products and produce,” the spokesperson says.
“Only products certified to carry the Australian Made, Australian Grown logo are eligible to be featured in the series.”
IBISWorld senior industry analyst Brooke Tonkin told SmartCompany the Aldi ad represents a “different avenue” for Aldi in the “fiercely competitive” supermarket industry.
“Aldi is looking to promote to consumers not all its products are private made and imported,” she says.
“Some consumers are very conscious of country of origin labelling, by promoting the Australia Made logo Aldi is trying to attract those customers.”
Tonkin says the ad may be an attempt to counteract the recent focus on Aldi’s German heritage.
“Aldi is a German supermarket, there is plenty of attention on them being a German chain recently, especially with the entrance of Lidl,” she says.
“Promoting Australia-Made shows they’re trying to accommodate the local market in terms of Australian products.”
But Tonkin says the biggest competitive factor for supermarkets remains price and so Aldi perhaps was just trying to make a point.
“At the end of the day, a lot of consumers make a lot of their choices based on price,” she says.
“It’s more they want to point out not all of their products are German.”
Tonkin says there appears to be a trend favouring Australian-owned products at the moment, and this potentially means increased competition for smaller independents as well.
“For smaller players, that’s their point of difference,” she says.
In a statement provided to SmartCompany, an Aldi spokesperson said the company had played an “important role” in the Australian community since opening its first stores in 2001, and worked with more than 850 suppliers a year.
“We are deeply committed to supporting Australian manufacturers, suppliers and growers, working closely together to offer our shoppers high quality, great value and locally-sourced products.”
“We have many great stories to share and this campaign profiles some of our best locally made products.”
The spokesperson said 90% of its core range was private label, with the majority of these products sourced from Australian manufacturers.
“We only source products from overseas when we can’t find the product, quality, efficiency or innovation we seek here in Australia.”
*This article was updated to include comments from Aldi at 2pm on July 13
Renee Thompson is a former journalist at SmartCompany. Previously, she worked at Fairfax Media for the Bendigo Advertiser and at another regional Victorian media outlet.
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