1. MARKET SITUATION

MyShopy is a digital shopping platform on both web and app that helps consumers save money, gain inspiration and facilitate their shopping process. We have 4 features:

1. Digital storage of loyalty cards
2. Promotions
3. Digital leaflets
4. Shopping lists

We're in a complex and very crowded market. With many competitors for every one of our 4 features, retailers launching their own apps, and new players popping up all the time. It even becomes confusing for the consumer. We decided to stand out from competitors offering limited features and user friendliness, by offering a 4-in-1 app and web tool. Effectively creating our own market and playing field.

2. OBJECTIVES

Our goal is to become the number 1 shopping platform in Belgium. This meant we needed to grow. Research showed that to do so, we needed to improve our TOM awareness and the knowledge of what features the myShopi platform offers. Increasing knowledge and understanding of our platform will result in more downloads and active users.

Even though we were a small player with a small budget we gave ourselves huge KPI's 25% TOM awareness (within our target group of PRP's between 25 and 55 year old), 1.000.000 app downloads and 500.000 active users (app + web)

This meant we had to be brave, determined and above all smart.

3. STRATEGY

By integrating all features into 1 single app and web tool we had already set ourselves apart from the competition, now we needed the world to know how different we were. Paradoxically we did this by talking less about ourselves. And more about real benefits for the consumer. In our communication we talked less about who we were, more about what we had to offer. Less about our features, more about our benefits. We moved away from a technical approach to a more human and personal proposition.

Focus was on loyalty cards, as this is a feature that provides an answer to the recognizable hassle at the cash register. Also, research shows that once people start using this feature, they are more likely to keep using it.

We moved our target audience away from the low hanging fruit of early adopters. To a new and clearly defined ideal consumer we called Lily. And who would Lily trust more as her smart shopping partner than someone who looked exactly like her? Both in demographics and looks. We talked to Lily. Through Lily.

We personified the myShopi app with a character that looked like an exact copy of the actress portraying the consumer in our campaign. Turning the myShopi app in a living shopping buddy, as reliable as yourself.

And so "Lily" was born: the organised "me" who understands your shopping needs and always has tips and tricks in mind to make shopping easier, faster, cheaper, ...You trust what you know, even if it tells you about something brand new.

Mass reach media were combined with contextual selective media. We favoured media contexts in which our shoppers were in a shopping mood or at the right place and time to download the app immediately (eg. Placemats, Metro, television).

Furthermore we made sure all media were visual media, to integrate the human element in the campaign, and because myShopi has a very specific orthography that is often misspelled. This way we not only reached our target audience in an engaging way, we finally gave our brand a face, a visual style and a recognisable personality. We transformed from a tool you could forget about to a human shopping buddy you couldn't live without.

4. Results

The results of the campaign were very positive. First of all: the qualitative evaluation scores (recall, likeability, correct attribution) were significantly higher compared to those of an earlier radio campaign launched in 2014 and even higher than other sector and overall benchmarks. Next to that, impact on our TOM awareness, downloads and active users was also positive. We outperformed our already very high KPI goals for downloads and active users and almost met our goal for TOM awareness:

• TOM awareness: 23%
• Downloads: 1.038.082
• Active users: 574.267

This led to the biggest result of all: a long term return of more than € 609.000 on a € 371.000 investment. That's the story of how we became more human and more effective.
The story of myShopi. And Lily.