With the “What’s in it” campaign, we aimed to change U stores’ brand perception: from one of the large retailers blamed for the increased consumption of “junk food” and related health issues, to a committed and reassuring brand capable of providing tech tools to improve each person’s food diets.

1/Since its creation, U stores have been fighting for food quality, starting with the removal of more than 100 controversial ingredients from over 6000 of their products. But in the wake of numerous food industry scandals, consumers have ended up distrusting the food they eat, whatever food brands or retailers may have been telling them for the past years. Despite all the talking of CSR, a recent study by the World Health Organisation has found that 1 in 5 deaths are caused by the food we eat. Consumers do not take food brands’ and retailers’ words for granted, they want to see for themselves.

2/Find a way for U Stores, 4th largest food retailer in France with 1,500 stores to help French consumers eat better, and leverage their 10 years’ commitment against nasties.

3/Position U as the leading leading trustworthy retailer when it comes to food transparency and better food.

What’s In It, the app that offers consumers to eat well, hunting and removing nasty ingredients from their food. The app has been developed by U Stores with its own customers as well as the whole market in mind, making it functional for all food brands and all retail stores, even at competitors’. The app indexes over 600,000 food products thanks to a partnership with Open Food Facts, the ‘Wikipedia of Food’.

The scan feature immediately gives access to a product ID card, with emphasis on the nasty ingredients contained therein. The search feature surfaces the best products with respect to the quality of their ingredients. The filter feature offers users to exclude nasty ingredients from the products they buy and the food they eat.

• Target audience (consumer demographic/individuals/organizations)

All consumers interested in eating better (circa 90% of the French population).

• Approach

Creating and building an app that’s straightforward about food transparency, that’s completely transparent and “takes no prisoners”, blowing the whistle on all food products, from all brands (including trade partners of U’s and U’s own private label products).

• Implementation

The app was designed and built over the course of 2018, before a public launch in September of 2018 with the support of a 360 media campaign (September-November 2018) and an ongoing digital download campaign (uninterrupted since September 2018).

• Timeline

- September 2018: Launch on App Stores (iOS & Android) in France (under the French name “Y’A Quoi Dedans”)

- September-November 2018: 360 media campaign

- September 2018-ongoing: digital download campaign

- Q4 2019: V2 of What’s In it

• Placement

- App Stores (Play Store & Apple)

- TV, In-Store, Online Videos, PR

- Google UAC (Universal App Campaign) & Facebook Mobile Downloads

• Scale

France-wide

U stores Market share in progress on second semester 2018 :+0.14%

Progress on sales for the U brand products (compared to the same period in 2017) :

-U Soda without aspartame : +16% oct 2018 / +10% nov 2018 / +7% dec 2018 + / +9% jan 2019

-U chocolate spread without palm oil : +5% oct 2018 / +9% nov 2018 / +3% dec 2018 / + 10% jan 2019

+500,000 downloads on iOS and Android since the launch (7 months)

262 M contacts

- TV : 145 M contacts

- VOL : 22,7 M impressions

- Twitter : 2,9 M impressions

- Facebook & Google : 90,9 M impressions

208 press articles & 2.3M euros in earned media

Brand perception :

- Social issue engagement of the brand :26% (+1.6pt)

- U product regarding quality :42% (+0.9pt)

- U product regarding wellness & healthiness :34% (+1.5pt)