It's tough being in retail during a down-turn. Any discretionary purchase gets cut out, so, unless you are selling food, you are in a world of pain.
What do we do in these situations? Why, we scream about value, of course. The temptation is to run campaigns driven by offers and low prices to try to drum up custom - especially when you are about to be challenged by a highly competitive new entrant.
Great retail advertising also needs to have one eye on the customer and one eye on the colleague. We all know that retail brand experiences are created almost entirely by the consumer's experience in the store, with a little nudge from out-of-store communication. The key question on every advertising brief must be: 'How will the store colleagues feel about it?'
In recent years, PC World seems to have answered these questions with the tired-and-tested 'show colleagues working in the store talking about the prices' strategy. Its version of this seems to have been about showing colleagues as gurning David Brent-alikes. This strategy must have been quite successful, because it persisted with it for so long, but now it has come up with a much better idea.
Instead of the store sitcom, we have a compelling dramatisation of a customer's 'world' of entertainment and some interesting ideas about how PC World has made it better, along with smart evolution of the 'Where in the world' jingle, which becomes 'Whatever your world'.
Now, instead of holding up one of those fairground distorting mirrors in front of the colleagues, PC World has instead tried to inspire them and set the bar high.
These ads say: 'You are not just a shop assistant, you are a home-entertainment consultant.' This is a much better way to inspire people, giving them a goal to aspire to rather than an image to reflect.
Instead of trying to scream about low prices and reduce the barriers to purchase, PC World has attempted to move upstream and introduce more reasons to purchase.
These ads say: 'We are not just offering deals on things you didn't want, we are giving you new reasons to want it (because you already know we're cheap).'
This is a much better way to recruit customers because it offers new news about the brand, rather than just repeating what everyone already knows about PC World.
With Best Buy on the horizon, the retailer has clearly taken a brave step to do something brand new (and something that runs the risk of diluting previously strong price perceptions), but it looks to me like a risk that will pay off handsomely.