THE CAMPAIGN

Tesco’s Voice of the Checkout TikTok competition went viral and attracted thousands of participants. There were also entries from the corporate accounts of other supermarkets, including Aldi, Asda, Co-op, Lidl and Morrisons, brands and organisations like CandyCrush and the British Transport Police – and retired TV presenter Michael Barrymore.

@tesco ⌛ Today is your last chance to audition for #TescoVoiceOfCheckout! See these entries from @fredasquith @webkinny @theboski @mystikle.blue @izzyiztrash ♬ original sound – Tesco

PRIZEOLOGY’S ROLE

To mark its launch on the social media platform TikTok, Prizeology helped Tesco and its agency create and run a competition to find a new checkout voice for Tesco’s self-scan checkouts. The promotion employed TikTok’s duet feature, which allows you to post a video side-by-side with a video from another TikTok account, so that the two videos play at the same time in a split screen.
Entering the competition was structured as an audition to be the new Tesco checkout voice and entrants were asked by a ‘talking till’ to respond to a series of questions, as follows:

• Why do you think you’ve got what it takes?
• How would you say, ‘Please check my bagging area?’
• What noise do I make when you scan something?
• How would you say, ‘Clubcard accepted’?

Prizeology were integral to the promotion from the start, advising Tesco and its agency on the concept and mechanic. Prizeology wrote the terms and conditions, and developed the judging criteria. All the entries were extracted from TikTok by Prizeology, which also put together a judging panel and managed the remote judging sessions. Despite the extremely high volume of entries, Prizeology’s robust criteria ensured that all entries were judged consistently.
The winner was a 27-year-old vet called Izzy, who won 10,000 Tesco Clubcard points and was invited to attend a special studio session she was recorded saying ‘Don’t forget to scan or tap your Clubcard’ and ‘Clubcard accepted.’ The audio of her voice was then used on Tesco self-scan checkouts for two weeks at the end of November 2022.

THE OUTCOME

This prize promotion ticked every box for Tesco. Not only was it a viral hit – the hashtag #tescovoiceofcheckout achieved more than 46.1 million views – which generated thousands of entries and significant press coverage for the supermarket and its Clubcard, but Tesco also found a new voice for its self-scan checkouts. In 2022, the campaign itself won the best creative category of the inaugural UK TikTok Awards.

@tesco The wait is over! The new #tescovoiceofcheckout is… @dogtor_who ♬ original sound – Tesco