Coles to launch Harry Potter collectibles on July 6 after striking Warner Bros deal
The supermarket giant is hoping to entice shoppers with a new range of Harry Potter toy collectibles, amid rising household costs and inflation.
Coles is teaming up with the wildly popular Harry Potter world of wizardry and magic in a new collectibles campaign in a bid to attract shoppers amid rising grocery prices, which has hit household budgets and spending on toys.
Amid food and grocery prices pacing ahead at more than 5 per cent, and a single head of lettuce costing $12, Coles will reward shoppers from July 6 with a Coles Magic Builder character from the Harry Potter series with every $30 spent in one transaction at Coles supermarkets, online and at Coles Express.
Working with Hollywood studio giant Warner Bros, Coles will offer a range of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts characters with the launch of Magical Builders, a collectibles campaign featuring Wizarding World characters and play kits that are plastic-free and recyclable.
It was a year ago that Coles pledged to no longer give away plastic toys at the checkout as part of loyalty campaigns, which put an end to its ‘Little Shop’ toys offer that when first released in 2018 was one of the most successful sales campaigns in recent retailing history.
Such was the excitement and popularity of Little Shop that it fuelled a massive uplift in Coles’ same-store sales at the time which rose 5.1 per cent and was the best quarterly performance in almost three years as it stripped shoppers from rival Woolworths.
The new incarnation of collectable toys comes as Coles tackles huge inflationary pressures that are pushing up prices at the supermarket and forcing many shoppers to rethink or pull back on some of their purchases.
“Providing value to our customers is always our number one priority,” said Coles chief marketing officer Lisa Ronson.
“How we provide that value based on our customers’ lives, is we do it in many ways. We do it through thousands of weekly specials, through our Fly-bys program, through our market leading ‘what‘s for dinner’ program with some innovative dinner ideas with a really low cost per serve, and also providing that quality kitchenware (giveaways) program that we have now provided 20m pieces of high quality kitchenware to our customers.
“And this year, and at this time, we think that our customers are going to be pulling back on discretionary spending, and that will be on things like toys and entertainment. So we think this is the right time to do this particular collectable which will be very much a fun item for kids to play with.”
Andrew Bromell, vice president at Warner Bros. Consumer Products, said Wizarding World remained strong in Australia with fans loving the recent release of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore in theatres and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child stage play in Melbourne.
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