SPAR has unveiled its BIG DEAL campaign which shines a light on the unsung, essential heroes of Christmas, such as bin bags, salt, tin foil and eggs.
To celebrate their Christmas deals, they’ve created a mock, tongue-in-cheek must have range to go against the perfect and more traditional Christmas images.
Selected stores are also taking part in SPARaoke – the UK’s first grocery store karaoke, fronted by music icon Roy Wood.
Shoppers are invited to grab a mic and sing along to Roy’s song I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday.
By singing along they are in with the chance to win their Christmas groceries for free.
Sarah Ellis, Group Marketing Director of AF Blakemore & Son, told Wholesale Manager more about the campaign.
Where have you worked before and in what roles?
I was at a variety of marketing agencies before I joined A.F. Blakemore about 10 years ago. The biggest chunk of time I spent was at McCann in Manchester. In terms of roles, I’ve gone from account exec through to senior account director before I moved into what I thought was going to be an easy life, client side. How wrong I was, whichever side you are, the other side’s always the easier part, isn’t it? What does your current role involve?
I’m group marketing director, I look after all of the marketing activity for all the Blakemore brands that we own or operate across our group. I look after the SPAR side of the business within our distribution area, as well as the other in-house brands that we’ve got, such as County Bridge Kitchen and Harriet’s bakery, which is our new bakery line. I look after our B2B digital platform for our independent retailers. I have the Media Centre as part of my remit and data and insight from a customer perspective, that’s quite a broad remit.
What are your goals for what you want to achieve in the role?
From a brand perspective, it would be about people loving the SPAR brand in the way that I do. It’s about understanding the importance of local, independent retailers within their communities, and the difference that it makes. The local store is a place where you can go to get solutions like food for now, food for later, the top up shop after the last-minute panic when the ‘what am I cooking tomorrow?’ conversation happens on a on a Sunday evening. But it’s also the fact that our stores are embedded in our communities. We can create stores that are unique to communities, but they also contribute massively, both from an economic and a social perspective. Our retailers, they volunteer, they sponsor, they contribute to local charities. Spreading the word of SPAR is probably my biggest goal.
How is the SPAR and Blakemore business performing at the moment?
We’ve got a clear strategy, we’re confident in our strategy. The retail sector has had a lot of headwinds over the over the last few years and we’re all facing into those same headwinds. We’ve got a customer first approach that’s based on data, our brand metrics are moving in the right direction. We’re confident in the plan that we’ve got and our ability to deliver it effectively.
Tell us about SPAR’s BIG DEAL Christmas campaign. What is the concept behind the campaign?
It’s got two elements to it. The fun, jovial side of the campaign is about bringing joy and fun into our local communities, having that opportunity for customers to come into store and just celebrate, have some fun, and potentially win their shopping. There is an immediate reward and then they are into entered into a prize role for a much bigger win. It supports the promotional activity that we’re doing in-store, which is about making a big deal of Christmas. For a lot of people, it’s been a hard year, so as we go into Christmas, let’s make a big deal of it, let’s make it fun. Let’s make sure that we can give our customers great prices on products that will help them at Christmas. Let’s make sure we’re there for all of those things that they might forget, without which Christmas isn’t the way it should be – the cranberry sauce, the stuffing mix. All of a sudden on Christmas morning you say, ‘I can’t believe I’ve forgotten the turkey foil tray.’ We are there on the doorstep for people to make sure that Christmas can be a big deal for them.
What are the items that shoppers often forget to purchase in the run-up to Christmas?
We can see it in some of our trading data, because we’re open on Christmas Day. We can see the stuff that people pop into our shops for, the items they’ve forgotten, like the cranberry sauce, the turkey tray, the tin foil, the various elements like that. We can see within our trading data that we get those peaks as customers sprint in to buy them.
Through what media will the campaign run?
To really bring it to life, we have partnered with Roy Wood from Wizard. We are bringing his song I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day into our SPARaoke campaign. Because it’s so visual, it lends itself really well to social media and hyper local type activity. We will be primarily focusing on our stores with social media content. We will have some features on our SPAR radio as well. When the song plays, the customer grabs the mic and does a little bit of SPARaoke, impromptu. It lends itself to those visual mediums, across our social platforms, primarily Facebook and Instagram.
What demographic is the campaign targeted at?
The winner last time was in her 70s so it’s a very broad demographic. The joy of Roy and the joy of Spotify these days is Roy is a big deal at Christmas and his song is certainly a big deal. When we were in our stores filming, you got the “you legend” type comment when he walked in, and then as soon as we played the song, everybody said, “I love this song.” That song has got the ability to spread across ages and demographics, because it is an iconic Christmas tune. We think everybody’s going to get on board with this one.
Do you think shoppers will want to sing karaoke in a shop when they are sober, as opposed to in a bar after a drink?
Some people love an opportunity to come in and show people what they’re what they’re made of. I always think it’s ruined if people can actually sing quite well. I think the joy of karaoke and SPARaoke is when people are not actually that tuneful. We had a really good mix across the stores that we ran it in. We have got great colleagues in-store and this is fun for them. They can encourage people to come along, They can start the sing-songs themselves. It really helps to create that bond between the store and community.
What was Roy Wood like to work with?
He was brilliant. He was such a good sport. He came in looking exactly like you would imagine Roy Wood looking with the little round glasses and everything. The people in the store wanted a photograph or an autograph and he did whatever we asked him to do, and more. He even took us back to his house in the afternoon to film the second part of our campaign in his purpose-built, Christmas filled studio. He was a real joy, he loved it, because he likes the fact that we’re putting the fun back into Christmas. He was quite willing to come along and partner with us and he has been really a joy to work with.
Where is the campaign running?
It’s running in December in 100 stores within the AF Blakemore geographical area, from Wales across to the East of England, and from Manchester across to Grimsby.
Do you have an e-commerce site for your customers?
Yes, our independent retailers can order through our web platform. They can order through the back-office EPOS system, or we have a an online platform that they can order from.
How digital is your business, and do you offer any IT support for your members e.g. ordering apps, online support, delivery tracking?
Yes, all of the above. They can track their orders, they can use the ordering app. Seeing as I oversee it, I would like to think we are very digitally literate. We are very conscious of the fact that, from a retailer perspective, their benchmark when they’re shopping online is the same as my benchmark as a consumer. I will be on Amazon and that’s our benchmark, how do we use that? As we built our e-commerce platform, we made sure we plugged in the top end software to be able to support it. We’ve got Playvue, we’ve got Meditate, we’ve got Hot Jar, we’ve got all of those platforms that run behind that make it really easy for us to be able to use data in a way that’s really usable and informative for our independent retailers. It’s a very visual platform. Compared to 10 years ago, when it was back end driven into our depot systems, now it is very much front end driven from a customer experience perspective, and then it links into the into our back-end systems.
What product categories does your business supply?
Everything you would expect to see within us, within a convenience store – chilled, frozen, ambient, food for now, food for later.
Are there any new products in the ranges you want to talk about?
Harriet’s is our latest brand launch. AF Blakemore is a family business and Harriet was the wife of Arthur Frank Blakemore. We have taken her love of baking and launched a range of of cakes into our stores. That has proven to be a real success. It combines great quality products at a great price. We have got our County Bridge range as well, which gives a really strong protein solution for our independent retailers, that enables customers, especially those in a lower income area, to be able to purchase protein centred meals at a really great price. Those two in-house brands have been performing well to help drive category growth.
How has the wholesale industry changed in recent years?
We have got 250 stores that we own and operate. The AF Blakemore approach is customer and data driven. We build our strategy out of customer insight. I have got data across every single touch point of our customer journey, meaning B2C. That enables us to have really detailed conversations with our retailers about what their customers are doing, understanding where else they are shopping, where are we losing sales? Where are we growing sales on a store-by-store basis? We might say to retailers, we can see from our data that your basket spend is lower than your competitors in the marketplace. You’ve got a share of wallet opportunity. This is what we should be able to do. We very much start from a customer first approach, and then build out of that, which is probably where wholesale has changed, as opposed to a supplier driven, stack it high, let the customer come in and choose themselves. This is your store format, your customer demographic, therefore it should look like this with this type of price and strategy to be able to support it, to be able to drive your bottom-line sales.
Comments are closed.