John Lewis resurrects ‘never knowingly undersold’ tagline to public acclaim
Yougov’s chief executive Steve Hatch takes a closer look at the data behind the biggest stories in business.
After dropping its “Never Knowingly Undersold” pledge in February 2022 on the
grounds that it lacked “relevance” amid competition from Amazon and other e-
commerce retailers, John Lewis announced that it was bringing the slogan back on 5
September.
There may be an obvious enough logic to the retailer resurrecting its old tagline in
these budget-conscious times. But has it had an impact on consumer opinion?
YouGov BrandIndex data shows that Buzz scores – which measure whether the
public have heard anything positive or negative about a brand in the past two weeks
– have doubled between 4 and 13 September, from 9.5 to 18.6 (+9.1).
This has corresponded with a boost to John Lewis’ Impression scores, which
measure overall sentiment, and which jumped from 44.7 to 50.0 (+5.3) over the
same period. It has also bolstered the department store chain’s already good
Reputation scores, which measure whether consumers would be proud or
embarrassed to work for a particular brand. These have improved from 38.3 to 46.2
(+7.9).
But the metric that may be most interesting to John Lewis – especially in an age of
belt-tightening – may be Value for Money. These scores rose from 15.3 to 23.4
(+8.1) over the period in question.
Bringing back the “Never Knowingly Undersold” tagline might have been an attempt
to build on John Lewis’ recent success: new chief executive, Nish Kankiwala, has
said “the buzz is back” for the brand in the wake of better than expected numbers
(according to its latest results, losses have halved from £59m to £30m). It may also
be an attempt to differentiate its current leadership from the previous management,
which ditched “Never Knowingly Undersold” in early 2022: with this in mind, reviving
the slogan may be a statement of intent. Whatever the motive, it has gone down well
with the public.