Part of the earlier motivation for retaining a unique identity in New Zealand was to build a brand that the local community could connect with.
“I can see the strategy behind it, but it was a bit like having one brand for all of Australia and then a unique brand for just New South Wales,” says Davis.
“New Zealand is not a particularly big brand in the scheme of things.”
Despite the effort Countdown put into pushing itself on to consumers as a local brand, competitors have always gleefully pointed out that Countdown is very much Australian-owned, regardless of what sticker it might have on the front door.
“Pak’nSave and the Four Square brands have long doubled down on their Kiwiness, and that’s something that Woolworths will need to respond to,” says Davis.
“I think the rebrand is probably an opportunity they’ll take to do some brand messaging about longevity in the New Zealand market, care for New Zealand growers and that sort of thing.”
The Countdown PR team has long also stressed the company has a footprint of 185 stores, employing 20,000 Kiwis across the country.
But rest assured, the competitive knives will be sharpened at the other half of our supermarket duopoly to undermine any attempts by Woolworths to stake a claim to being Kiwi.
Asked about the hefty $400m price tag attached to this rebrand, Davis jokes that it doesn’t sound like a bad deal compared to the billion dollars the company spent previously.
He also believes that the money will be recouped relatively quickly in the savings that will come from having a single brand platform running across Australia and New Zealand. This cost-saving approach is one that’s well-used by numerous other businesses operating across several markets.
“When brands like Caltex were heavily into retail advertising, they would literally make four or five different versions of the same creative all at the same time and then roll it out in the different markets,” says Davis.
“So don’t be surprised if we get another debate about Aussie or Kiwi kids, as we saw with Weet-Bix, happening in the Woolworths space.”
He’s referring here to Weet-Bix advertising from the early 1990s, featuring a jingle with the tagline “Kiwi kids are Weet-Bix kids”. It turns out that the Australian arm of the company was running a campaign declaring “Aussie kids are Weet-Bix kids” around the same time.
Davis says whenever a local brand is subsumed into a global banner, there is a risk to the quality of the advertising playing in the local market.
“I do think it hits the quality of the creative and the depth of the emotional connection that the brand forms with their communities. New Zealand brands and agencies have long had great strength in tapping into what it means to be New Zealand and showing that to us on screen. Making a variant of a transtasman ad for a local market is unlikely to do that.”
There is a possibility that Woolworths might pursue an entirely independent New Zealand creative strategy, but it also wouldn’t be surprising to see the company lean on what was already being made in the far larger market.
In terms of the attachment Kiwis might have to the Countdown brand, Davis doesn’t believe there will be too many tears shed once the shift is made to Woolworths.
“The nostalgia effect will be a bit like removing your hand from a bucket of water. You won’t notice the change. It’s a bit like Telecom becoming Spark. We all thought it was a bit weird and confronting, but six months down the track, no one cares.”
And whether it’s Woolworths or Countdown or Uncle Bob’s Superette, it will do little to cool the rage Kiwis feel when they see the cost of their weekly shop these days.
Damien Venuto is an Auckland-based journalist with a background in business reporting who joined the Herald in 2017. He is currently the host of The Front Page podcast and also writes columns and articles, often focused on the intersections between business and creativity.
