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Never Knowingly Underestimate Never Knowingly Undersold

How John Lewis created a brand from just 3 words

If you’re British, try and imagine a world without the presence of John Lewis.

Bleak isn’t it?

Irrespective of your shopping habits, even if you’ve never stepped into 1 of its 42 department stores (excluding Waitrose, outlets or pop-ups) or bought from its (slightly dated) website, it’s likely that the name will mean something to you. It has a quintessential Britishness to it — similarly, if not more so, to Marks & Spencer, which has a much wider High Street presence with over 1,000 stores.

With this impact in mind, let’s go back to the idea of that non-John Lewis world. In this alternate universe, we will give you the job of CEO for some new High Street department store. Just to bring it to life a little, let’s give it a name. We’ll call it Jim Lowis. Top of our heads….

Now, in this role, you have employed an Ad Agency to create a brand that will mean something to the public at large. It needs to cut through to your DNA and be able to print itself on the minds of folk for years to come. Everything rides on the look, the feel, the words that you’re paying millions for.

After months and months of consumer research and creative exploration, the Agency are at the end of their 4-hour presentation. There is silence-apart from the echo of a drum-roll in your mind — as they are about to do their big reveal on the line that will revolutionise the Jim Lowis brand.

The slide pops up and, one by one, three words fill the screen in front of you

How quickly do you think you would fire them for what is, on paper, just Never Quite Right?

Back in the real world, they finally seem to be thinking the same.

The various monikers given in the press coverage illustrate that from the outset, there’s something, well, something that doesn’t really fit with the phrase, Never Knowingly Undersold.

Though technically it isn’t a phrase. It isn’t a clause either. It’s more a ‘sentence fragment’. Which sounds a bit librarian.

From a marketing perspective, calling it a caption feels too small. Proposition seems too grandiose. Vows, promises and pledges are all too tactical. Slogans are too ’80s. Catchphrases are too, well, too Roy Walker.

And that’s just looking at the construct.

The choice of words used lift the (for sake of simplicity) ‘phrase’ outside of conversational normality. Other lines exist that may be more famous and that may have stronger brand associations, but they almost always come with an accepted non-capitalised use.

For example, you wouldn’t bat an eyelid if, when dawdling on a task, you were asked to just do it. Or if a charity collector pleaded for your small change because every little helps. You would just about accept the compliment if told you’re worth it.

Now try and think of a similar scenario using never knowingly undersold. Without referencing John Lewis.

It’s difficult because NKU is more than just an associated tagline. It defines the John Lewis brand emotionally, over and above the pricing policy to which it really refers. It is the blood flowing through its veins… if we meant the man himself. As it is, maybe it’s the Egyptian cotton running through the stitching of its bedsheets.

Removing something so intrinsic will take a lot more than just burning the words from the white and green bags.

It was never meant to be this way. That the line “acts as a reminder to all customers of our pricing policy” was a nice side-effect of an internal proposition.

The “nearly 100 years” existence it claims of the line, refers to when it was used internally for the first time by John (Spedan) Lewis (the son). It didn’t become customer-facing for around another 30 years, appearing on vans and livery in the 1950s.

As recently as the 1980s — according to their own timeline — the main purpose of Never Knowingly Undersold was to act as a summary of the pricing policy for their buyers.

Ironically, it’s this pricing policy that causes the main problems for the brand. For a decade or so, the Ts&Cs have been brought out of the small print, raising arguments about online and offline competitors and questioning the definition of value.

As for the phrase itself, 21% of respondents to a 2018 survey thought it meant that the company actively aimed to be more expensive than its competitors. (To clarify for those in the back, it means the exact opposite.)

In our current culture of paranoia — where we greet offers or deals with instant cynicism and won’t rest until our mistrust has been ratified — retailers can quickly get themselves wrapped up in the detail. Potentially losing sight of the ‘why’ by defending the ‘what’.

Dealing only with Terms and Conditions readers and dumb survey responders takes you down a path too narrow. Any Price Promise message isn’t really about price, it’s about trust — appealing to those who have better things to do than fight for their ‘double the difference’. At its most basic, it is a statement of intent.

Never Knowingly Undersold goes further than just intent in the area of pricing. It frames John Lewis’ entire perspective on the world. They could have emblazoned bags with The High Street’s Cheapest. Give or take a caveat, it says pretty much the same thing about their policy. So why isn’t being cheap something we associated with “Posh Shop John Lewis” (Daily Mirror) — either literally, or as a brand.

For the average, middle-aged, Middle Englander — of which there are many — John Lewis is somehow posher than Marks and Spencer, but not as posh as Harrods. There is an association of affluence given by shopping there-but an affluence that is attainable not just to those with money, but to those who understand the quality it represents.

When you are behind someone in the queue for the till at Sainsbury’s and they pull out a John Lewis carrier to pack their groceries, know that it is rarely just a random choice. Notice that it will have been folded neatly away, bot crumpled in the corner with the Aldi bag. You may not know why, but there will have been conscious thought to its use.

Ask anyone and they will deny it. And you will believe them because it’s a subtle signifier rather than a brash, showy shout. No other High Street store — not many brands — have equivalent connotations.

This is where the real value of the phrase comes into play. Put aside the small print and look at the impact that is subliminal by the choosing of each extra word.

Strong, definitive and unerring fact. The emphasis on Never overshadows the whispering caveat that immediately follows.

Remember, it is the knowing that is never done (not the undersold). The implication that staff enter cheaper stores wearing blindfolds and with fingers in their ears. It is, after all, the knowledge they never have.

The choice of an uncommon adverb adds an air of formality. Whilst perfectly acceptable, more often we would use “not knowing”. It’s a word used in literature more than spoken English, commonly seen as one of those unnecessary words used by authors to explain subtext behind a spoken line (he typed, snobbishly).

And then, of course, there is the “word that never was”.

The third-person passivity of the word makes it something you might hear worm out at the mouth of Boris Johnson. It’s not difficult to hear his voice squirming as he shirks responsibility. Use of the passive means the speaker doesn’t have to specify blame and in time, Boris could say “he may have been undersold on the true nature of the pandemic”.

It is as though the preposition and verb have been drawn together to act as curtains covering the real truth behind them.

Our unfamiliarity with Undersold, due to its lack of use almost anywhere except here, could make it seem distant. Instead, coming at the end of this three-word structure, it has a boldness, confidence that strengthens the believability of the overall promise.

Other retailers are happy to own their versions of grand declarations — “WE won’t be beaten on price”, “ The ASDA low-price guarantee”; “ CURRY’S Price Promise” — but John Lewis raise themselves above such brash boasting by giving it this wrapper of passivity.

If someone speaks of themself in the third person, they get a slapping. With John Lewis, it seems natural. If you like, it undersells itself, reading as though an accepted standard practice of life that the retailer is merely echoing.

Still, it does confuse. So if we were to draw all that together and explicitly remove any room for doubt, the line could read something like this:

Their carrier bags are big. But that may be pushing it somewhat.

Never Knowingly Undersold is more than just a punchier way to say this. It’s more than just a headline offer, a promise of action or a commitment.

Never Knowingly Undersold is a personality. It is an aspiration of the way things should be. It doesn’t just tell us what they do, it tells us what they would like to think they do. It’s best intentions.

It says they’re nice, polite — typically British — people. And they want to live in a nice, polite — typically British — world.

Treating Never Knowingly Undersold as just an RTB, an occasional tagline or a product proposition is to misunderstand its true purpose, value and meaning. Derailing it because of the literal issues in the small print or the confusion of the stupid feels short-sighted and foolish.

The first steps towards modernity have been taken, with the announcement of 32 new brands coming into the John Lewis fold. That’s 32. Thirty. And another two.

It’s an interesting strategy that seems to rest on the hope that, contrary to popular belief, complication is more effective than simplification. It feels like a reckless road on which to begin this journey.

If Never Knowingly Undersold really does disappear into brand history, it will be because the stores themselves cease to exist. It is possible we could see them killed by an avalanche of product and taglines.

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