First to have flooded the heart of large cities and pioneer of new consumer habits, Monoprix has made the ordinary less ordinary for city people for 85 years. The jokes on its colorful packs even became part of national pop culture, a humorous reference that people loved to share. Through them, Monoprix became a love brand. Therefore, for decades, cities were Monoprix’s kingdom.

However, after peaceful years of success, Monoprix was facing up to a triple threat: 1) The massive arrival of specialized offers in large towns, 2) 12 X higher competing media investments, 3) A grocery shopping digitalization led by Amazon. As a result, Monoprix was losing momentum dramatically. That’s why defending our business position, reinforcing our customers’ loyalty and, above all, winning back our emotional leadership, was a matter of life or death for us.

To take up this challenge, we needed more than a just simple advertising campaign. We were convinced that it’s no longer about brands pushing content to people but about enabling brands to create meaningful and emotional connections through entertainment. This is why we decided to create a powerful emotional story to naturally engage them. We took advantage of our 85th anniversary as an opportunity to do so.

On this occasion, we couldn’t imagine telling any another story than the one celebrating our emotional relationship with city dwellers through our very own conversational packaging.

We told it with a format never before seen in the world of French advertising: a 4 minute film.

Because we strongly believed in the emotional power of our story, we bet on a long format combined with a low GRP strategy. Mission accomplished, entertainment won.

With only 35 GRP invested, we generated 4X more conversations on Google than our main competitors. In addition to this, our campaign turned into a massive phenomenon online with more than 26K tweets and 11,5M views online in one week. As a result, Monoprix became the 5th most French engaging brand on Instagram. Quickly, the media seized our campaign, offering Monoprix more than 80 coverages nationally but also internationally.

This is how, in spite of a low media investment, we succeeded in generating more than 372 million potential impressions on PR and social media within 7 days.

Moreover, the public affection for our campaign immediately turned into business gain. The first Saturday of the campaign brought about a higher turnover than the Saturday 30th December, usually one of the biggest sales days of the year. Monoprix revenues went through the roof from the campaign start (+6%). The buying frequency significantly increased (+5,5%) and the number of loyalty program members shot up (+21%).

Finally, Monoprix’s attraction rate rose by 6,5 points, its price perception strongly improved to reach 52% (vs 40% in 2016) and Monoprix become the most appreciated proximity retailer in France.

We surpassed our objectives, yet what makes us the proudest is to have generated a huge sense of pride and belonging among Monoprix’s employees.