The year 2025 is here baby, it has to be better than 2024 right? Off we go again and the world of Good and Bad PR never sleeps, especially after the Golden Quarter for retail. Join me as I take a jolly romp through the winners and losers.

It Asda be an accounting error

Asda finished the year in line with the rest of its experience of 2024; badly. It had the worst Christmas sales since 2015, and tried to cling on to some positivity by shouting about its sales improving in the last few weeks – but it could not drown out the negative headlines.

This means the market share gap has now narrowed between themselves and the social media savvy German discount supermarkets. According to a Kantar report, Asda lost the most sales of any UK supermarket in 2024.

In a rare effort to not just put the boot in, let’s think about what could be the quick (but painful) PR wins the brand could kick off. Announcing it is reinstating its previous petrol pricing strategy of being at least 1p less than its rivals would be a headline grabber whilst also showing it means business.

The second move could be to fight fire with fire on social media and try to take on the German discount brands at their own game and start poking them in the back with some fun content. Would Asda be brave enough to do that? Would the c-suite realise this would have to be a long-term effort? Probably not.

With social media carrying so much false sway in the court of public opinion, it must be worth a try before they circle the retail of plughole life and start to become attractive to Mike Ashley.

These are not just great sales numbers, they are M&S great sales numbers

M&S is the polar opposite of Asda in so many ways. It had a storming Christmas and overall a strong 2024. The retailer was a food and drink winner for the festive period, breaking all the previous sales records.

December the 23rd was also the busiest food and drink shopping day in its history, reporting that sales were up in the clothing division too. This bucked the retail trends and stats being pumped out by Kantar and the British Retail Consortium who reported its rivals' sales were flatlined during the final quarter.

The other area where M&S is light years ahead of Asda is the leadership from the top. Stuart Machin is a comms person’s wet dream. Whilst Asda is trying to find a new CEO and being led by its chairman, Machin is simply nailing the comms, no doubt via the guidance of his PR team. His trading update videos are next level, his social media is on point and his messaging is perfectly delivered.

People like me who are asked to deliver media training to c-suite types have been clipping his video briefings and saving them for the next session. Great work by M&S.

Tesco, every Christmas helps…

Tesco is next up for the praise. The retail giant reported its best ever seasonal sales period with its largest market share of the Xmas shop since 2016.

It now has 28.5% of the total grocery market share and has even won some of this back from the discount brands, which deserves to be celebrated. The brand added 300 new products over the festive period, which is nearly 200 below what M&S did but it clearly worked as their Finest range sales were also massively up.

A special dollop of extra praise goes to Tesco for its Meal Deal PR machine firing up this week too. I love that Brits have turned their back on the 2023 favourite snack element of the meal deal, McCoy's steak flavour crisps, and in 2024 the humble, single, boiled egg took the top spot. The sausage bacon and egg sarnie was also knocked off the top spot in 2024 by the chicken club sandwich. Coca Cola is always, quite rightly, the drink of choice.

I can only hope that the single egg snack is eaten by the WFH brigade as they stink an office out fast. A super week of comms for Tesco. 

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More analysis below from Carma's enterprise business development manager, Ryan Boulter

ProCook feels strong headwind of change

The brand that gets the final chunk of Good PR is ProCook. Whilst the British Retail Consortium reported that only food and drink retails had a bonza Christmas, ProCook demonstrated that this wasn’t always true.

Its bricks and mortar and online sales were both up by significant amounts and it also laughed in the face of the “strong headwind” corporate brigade by opening five new retail stores in the final quarter of 2024.

The CEO statement caught my eye as it ended in a dynamic rule-of-three moment. This one observation alone tells me they are the kind of person I would love to go and cook an egg with. ProCook is a great British success story and deserves huge praise.