Grow Your Social Engagement and CTR, Just Like SuperValu & Centra

How difficult was Q1 for your brand? In a value focused quarter, challenging for shoppers and businesses alike, Centra and SuperValu NI wooed with a light-hearted and entertaining approach to buying value products. Queue Epic Deals, a series of video ads that increased engagement across social channels and increased clickthrough rate onto the offers leaflet, where the product deals are showcased.

Industry: Food Retail

Company Size: Enterprise (More than 200 employees)

Location: Northern Ireland

The campaign delivered an increase in social engagement as well as a rise in sales on products advertised. Want to learn how we created an effective digital strategy and mastered their value proposition? Scroll on to find out more!

Centra and SuperValu are two of Northern Ireland’s leading convenience brands, with bright, accessible stores throughout the country.

They have a reputation for quality, value, and friendly service, with one of their unique selling points being that stores are operated and owned independently by local people.

Centra operates over 102 stores where SuperValu has 37 independently owned stores throughout Northern Ireland. Both committing to good, fresh food, and excellent service as well as price power and state-of-the-art retail systems.

They understand that consumers are continuing to deal with a cost-of-living crisis, and they are leading the charge in delivering value when it matters most. Footfall on Britain’s high streets and shopping centres plunged by more than a quarter in the week after Christmas compared with the week before. The footfall for the third week of January was 27.7% lower than the week before and 19.7% down on the same week in 2019, retail data analysts Springboard said. January is indeed a long month with ever dwindling resources for consumers to draw from.

Musgrave NI, the parent company of Centra and SuperValu NI, wanted to reaffirm their commitment to affordability and value in a market that is saturated with value promises, while offering consumers light relief and entertainment in the form of short form video.

So, the challenge of now, to showcase your offer in a way that is sympathetic to the current climate, are you onboard with this? The approach has proven effectiveness, here’s how we did it for Centra and SuperValu.

After some consideration of what the client required, MXB proposed a dual-channel social activation strategy for the Epic Deals video series. Using Meta, our key objective was to generate awareness of the Epic Deals campaign and to deliver video views across the content on Facebook and Instagram. We ensured good social interaction by engaging cult heroes Roy Walker, Paddy Raff, and Cherrie Ontop as part of our influencer led approach.

Desi Derby, Marketing Director of SuperValu and Centra, said “With the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, many household budgets are more stretched than ever. We are committed to helping our shoppers save money on their everyday essentials, offering great value and quality through our own-brand products, and also on the big brands that they love to help them through this period when their purse strings are particularly tight. January and February will undoubtedly still be tough months for everyone. On a post-Christmas low, with the dark mornings and evenings, we wanted to provide some joy for our shoppers, and we hope our hilarious new campaign with national treasure, Roy Walker; Paddy Raff and Cherrie Ontop does just that. As they compete to be the face of Epic Deals, who will come out on top? They’re in it, to win it.”

The digital strategy required a video first approach, proposing influencers and developing some creative clout.

When creating this script, we wanted to ensure that customers across the generations of shoppers were entertained, even those who had to ask, ‘Who’s Roy Walker then?!”.  We used characters from a few different generations, although they might contest that point, but we knew that intergenerational approach would transcend trends.

For those 70s and 80s folks, Roy Walker was a screen icon with his quick quips and dry wit. Featuring Roy was an incredible tribute to that dead pan humour we love in Northern Ireland, and he brought his own special brilliance to the script. Paddy Raff by comparison could be seen as a ‘new kid on the block’ but pulls in high ratings on ‘The Paddy Raff Show’ on the BBC and proves particularly popular with Millennials and Gen X.  And for a taste of pizazz and pure electricity we fused the trio with Northern Irish star Cherrie Ontop.

Choosing Influencers involves so much more than checking the followers.  They need to speak to the brand character, align with the campaign message and above all, it needs to feel indigenous.  Contrived influencer campaigns just do not fly.  And we had a tall order, we wanted to entertain our current audience, but also to connect with potential new customers.

Our campaign spanned January and February.

Our strategy had two clear and targeted objectives around video views and deep engagement.  Social posts were optimised for video views to ensure maximum exposure and engagement. Deep engagement was measured by likes, comments, and shares, and parameters were set for target audiences.

Our targeting was considered along with our campaign objectives closely. Given the nature of the campaign and the wide geographical spread of Centra and SuperValu stores across Northern Ireland, our targeting parameters were intentionally broad to do the job that needed doing.

Given their continued investment and dare we say the great work we deliver for both brands, Centra and SuperValu NI already have a highly engaged and active following across social media.  This meant we could deliver custom audience targeting effectively.

Throughout the campaign, we also built a retargeting audience to ensure viewers of each video were also served with the other five campaign videos.  As if they weren’t all waiting with bated breath to hear who got the part from those unforgettable auditions.  Cherry on Top singing ‘I’m gonna head to Centra for some epic deals, in my 6-inch heels’ is still being bellowed out by our creative team via entirely impromptu outbursts, we clearly cannot get enough of it.

The results of the Epic Deals Campaign showed how a digital strategy with creative flair and flawless implementation can deliver real success. Of course, creative and digital simply won’t deliver effectively unless they are both on par, digital can only be effective if the creative is compelling and creative can only be effective if digitally deployed in a diligent way.  At MXB, we get the importance of both working together, some might even say it’s our appreciation of this that sets us apart as a creative digital agency.

So, the upshot I hear you ask?  Well with an epic creative and digital approach we were able to deliver over 2 million video impressions and almost 2 million video views.

Interestingly, 84% of the views came from TikTok, a newish platform for the brand. So, what can we learn from that insight? Well, it proves that unexplored mediums can deliver incredible results for clients.  Often brands can discount new platforms, perhaps believing their brand message isn’t right for that audience.  We try and be more open minded when developing your creative approach.  If the tonality is true to your brand, put it out there, let the audience decide.  While delivering a fun and entertaining experience, we also saw a significant click through to the leaflet, the primary spot to discover the value product line-up and deals that each brand was offering.

Developing a creative approach to assert your value proposition in a way your audience can appreciate and even enjoy, not only encourages social engagement but also builds brand loyalty.  And it’s that loyalty that encourages the audience to support your brand or business in a fiscal sense, something that was certainly demonstrated with this campaign.

But the big take-away from this one, don’t forget to have fun with it.  Remember where we started this conversation?!  Quarter 1 is challenging enough, let’s have a laugh when we can.

Developing a creative digital approach to assert your value proposition and connect your brand with new and existing audiences can deliver big impact.

If you want to discuss how to achieve results for your brand get in touch with MXB today.