Coles' chief marketing officer Lisa Ronson told Sky News the retail giant took its role as “essential service” during the depths of the COVID-19 crisis. A surge in panic buying in the nascent stage of Australia's COVID-19 outbreak saw sales figures surge to $8.23 billion in the third quarter - up 13.8 per cent on the same time last year.
In March, Coles announced tougher restrictions on toilet paper purchases as the supermarket giant struggled to cope with a giant spike in demand of essential products.
Ms Ronson said the retailer had to take the unusual step of putting restrictions on products “to protect our staff and our customers.”
“We made sure more of the community could access those products, so the elderly, the disabled and those people who don’t have the ability to come into a supermarket every day,” she said.
“It really resonated with the Australian people because we were trying to look after those who couldn’t get into the supermarket.
“We also shifted our whole online business to look after those people who were elderly or who were in hibernation.”
She said the company’s marketing department was separated into two teams, each with a specific focus on providing information to customers.
“I separated my team into those working on COVID communications, obviously very tight turnaround, they were constantly working very long hours to get some of those more community service announcements type messages out there,” she said.
“A part of team was looking more longer term, so when customers were starting to look for some joy and optimism, which was really around the Easter time period where we started celebrating, albeit in a very, very different way than Easter last year or what Easter will hopefully be like next year.”
0 Comments