Don’t Look Back in Aldi: A Proper Lesson in Customer-Centricity

Picture it: a working-class town up in t'north. The sun’s blazing (or 'crackin' t'flags' as we say up there). The beer’s warm and just down the road from Heaton Park, where the Oasis reunion is about to blow the roof off nostalgia, a humble supermarket store has changed its name.

Welcome to “Aldeh”.

The average hospitality brand is spending most of their time agonising over whether “Joyful Authenticity” or “Empowered Belonging” is the tone that will "really connect" with their audience. Meanwhile, Aldi just rolled up its sleeves, dropped its vowels, and delivered a pitch-perfect moment of market orientation.

Timed to perfection ahead of the Oasis reunion gigs, it’s a tiny gesture that’s absolutely massive in meaning. A nod to the place, the culture, and the people they serve. It’s a wink. An in-joke. A brand saying, “We’re one of you. We get it... We're mad-fer-it, too!”

This is what I teach in my Marketer’s Epiphany module: the idea that before you can build a brand, you’ve got to do a full 180. It's that magical moment when you stop seeing the world through your own eyes and start seeing it through your customer’s. Seeing things the way they see it; speaking how they speak; thinking how they think. Too many marketers skip this fundamental step in proper marketing. They dive straight into Canva and TikTok reels, without ever actually understanding the people they’re trying to "connect" with.

Aldi didn’t skip that step. Aldi's marketing team know their stuff!

Roll with it...

This isn’t a year-long purpose-led positioning campaign. It’s not a rebrand. It’s just Aldi having a laugh, being culturally fluent, and showing up with personality and timing. They didn’t need to say they’re local, they just proved it.

They even launched a £4.99 “Aldimania” bucket hat - because of course they did! It’s silly, scrappy, and very smart. Aldi knows the Heaton Park crowd. They’re not rocking up with their oat milk flat whites like some sort of Coldplay gig... They’re here for tunes, and lager, and a story to tell their mates down the boozer.

They spun the lens. They looked at the world from their customers’ point of view, not from behind the boardroom table. What’s happening in Manchester right now? What are people excited about? What’s the vibe, the inside joke? That’s market orientation. Not just researching what people want, but feeling it. Not jumping on the latest "trend" but getting in on the moment, without crashing the party.

Live Forever? Not quite. But it will last in the memory.

This kind of marketing doesn’t scale in the spreadsheet sense. It doesn’t show up in your quarterly KPIs. But it’s the stuff people remember. It's how brands become loved (if anyone ever truly "loves" a brand), not just tolerated.

It’s also the kind of thing most brands are too cautious, too slow, or too self-important to ever attempt.

Which is why the lesson of this one tiny store sign should be taught to all marketers!

TL;DR

• Your brand values don’t matter as much as your customers’ context.

• Proper marketing starts with customer fluency, not bandwagons.

• If you want to matter, sound like them, not like you.