Little Lions

1. market situation

2022 has been a year of brutal inflation, reaching a staggering record of 10,3%. Statbel noted that the inflation on groceries has never been as high as it was in 2022. It's no surprise that this had a major impact on people's purchasing power. Hard discounters Aldi and Lidl won market share while Delhaize took the punches. In the first quarter of 2022, Delhaize was hit by a twofold blow: it had a decrease in store visits and a decrease of average ticket value despite an increase in price per item. The total market declined whilst there was a natural shift to hard discounters, with Aldi as the big winner.

For Delhaize customers, price has never been the reason to come, but it's the first reason to leave. But falling in the discounter trap and randomly lowering prices has proven to be a bad marketing strategy for Delhaize. We learned that lesson the hard way during the financial crisis of 2008.

To get Delhaize back in consumer's hearts, minds, and wallets, we needed to offer a new affordability solution on every day, highly penetrated qualitative products. The real challenge was to integrate this affordability proposition at the heart of the Delhaize brand without destroying its image as the quality food retailer.

Finding this affordability proposition became even more important when we investigated the audience's attitude towards grocery shopping. More than half of all Belgians (54%) said they were buying less A-brands, shopping smaller baskets, and buying more discounts. For the first time since long, price-oriented shopping has overtaken quality-oriented shopping. Our main targets love Delhaize's quality but were suddenly willing to downgrade and buy basic daily products from discounters - which certainly was the case for families with kids. For them, Delhaize was risking becoming a top-up shop. As Delhaize's CEO stated: 'we can't stand indifferently because many of our clients will resort to inferior and less healthy products'.

2. Objectives

To live up to the promise of its baseline ('On the side of life / Mee met het leven / Du côté de la vraie vie'), Delhaize needed to help defend Belgian's purchasing power. To accomplish this mission, Delhaize was aiming to disrupt the market by introducing a unique everyday-low-prices platform that helps customers buy better in its stores. The end goal is to positively impact Delhaize's price perception without damaging brand equity, leading to increased bottom-line sales.

The first objective of the campaign was to shift the price perception of Delhaize with a credible message. If we wanted to change the overall consideration, we needed to launch something only Delhaize could do. Integrating a random pricing platform, like the conventional approach adopted by several discounters, would be more detrimental to the brand's reputation than beneficial.

• KPI 1 - Price perception: improve the price perception of Delhaize by 10%
• KPI 2 - Consideration: increase the consideration of Delhaize
• KPI 3 - Credibility, brand linkage: exceed the Delhaize brand linkage benchmark

The second objective was to generate a positive impact on business results.

• KPI 4 - Shopping frequency: increase the number of people who shop more often at Delhaize due to the campaign by 20%
• KPI 5 - Sales volume: increase the sales volume of the new everyday-low-prices assortment by 15%

3. Strategy

Delhaize needed to introduce an everyday-low-prices platform that was differentiated from the promotional platforms of competitors and that didn't devalue Delhaize's brand equity. Delhaize needed to take a uniquely branded angle by focusing on the better value of its own low-priced products (vs. the ones of the discounters). Enter a new 'everyday-low-prices' product category: Delhaize selected 500 high-rotating everyday products of its own label. The new category didn't consist of price breakers in the market, rather they offered the best value for money for qualitative daily necessities, guaranteeing a very competitive price in the category but with Delhaize quality.

The new product category presented a challenge. Brands need to be consistent and coherent to build mental availability and to take advantage of that mental availability. But at the same time, Delhaize needed new associations that make the new category stand out. Delhaize needed to make this new category distinctive AND ownable. We decided to take our most important brand asset, the iconic lion, and present it in a fresh way so it leads our customers to the best priced essential products in the stores. The thinking was to update our brand equity, not to abandon it. This would allow us to cut through the promotional clutter of the category and to bypass the category codes of flashy, shouty & temporary promotional deals that constitute the retail industry's sea of sameness.

4. Resuls

This disruptive approach effectively impacted Delhaize's price perception, a vulnerability which it had been struggling with for years, in a credible way: the campaign improved Delhaize's price perception by 11bps, starting at 37% three months prior to the campaign and shifting to 48% one-month post campaign. The Little Lions campaign also helped to increase Delhaize's consideration significantly.

Credibility of the campaign was also an important factor. The Little Lions communication needed to stay as close to the Delhaize brand as possible while remaining credible. The campaign had an unseen result for brand linkage, surpassing the benchmark of Delhaize campaigns with 30%.

27% of Delhaize customers stated that they shop more often at Delhaize, and an additional 29% plan to go shopping more at Delhaize due to the Little Lions campaign. In just 1 month, sales of the Little Lions increased with 21%. The Little Lions also had a positive effect on the average basket value and size. Baskets containing Little Lions products have a considerably larger value (€ 46,60) than the average basket (€ 29,16). Baskets with Little Lions were also bigger (17 pieces) than the average basket (9 pieces).

Finally, our integrated approach had a return on advertising of 5,2. This campaign managed to stay true to the power of the Delhaize brand and leveraged it in a fresh way. By bypassing the category codes of flashy, shouty and temporary promotional deals, Delhaize found the sweet spot between pricing strategy and brand strategy. The Little Lions are and will be a prime example of updating Delhaize's brand equity and continuing its promise of being on the side of life.