This is your moment, Lidl!
Yes, Lidl has scored a massive own goal with recent business decisions. Customers are not happy.
This is the company that challenged the supermarket status quo and turned grocery shoppers into underdog advocates. They've made bargain hunting sexy. They've made low priced supermarket brands cool and been eating others' market share year after year with this approach.
They've now changed their loyalty scheme to look indistinguishable from any other major supermarket and I'm also seeing (unconfirmed) posts about head office replacing swathes of staff with AI chatbots, starting with HR. All of a sudden, customers are thinking "hmmm aren't they behaving like the companies they sought to challenge?" A bit like when the pigs start sleeping in the farmer's bed in Animal Farm.
So now what? Customers are threatening to leave. Many won't, some will. Many in the middle will just not seek out Lidl above any other supermarket. They're now at what PR people would often refer to as an inflection point. Decisions here are going to lead to massive consequences.
They have two options.
Listen to customers and give them back what they loved. This is going to take a lot of humility from corporate leaders, people not famous for humility and empathy.
Prove, undeniably and publicly, that changes put in place *do* actually result in a net benefit for customers. In PR, it's not just about doing the right thing, but being *seen* to do the right thing. People aren't stupid, they're seeing straight through the current tinned and automated answers from the Comms team. They need a better value prop than what they're currently producing.
What they absolutely cannot do here is double-down, close eyes and ears and bulldoze forward. Or, heaven forbid, seek advice from an external consultancy/PR agency for the answers to their own customer problem.
So, now's your time, Lidl. Are you the brand you've been building for years, or are you just like the supermarkets you sought to challenge?