The Finnish retail market was stable for decades, until Lidl entered the market 15 years ago and started to gain more market share from “the two big” – S-group and Kesko. Now Lidl is #3 in the market, and marketing has genuinely become a competitive tool for the retail chains. S-group lowered their prices in 2015, which lead to a ruling price war.

Summer is crucial for retail – and for Lidl, the summer campaign is the most important one for the whole year. The retail market is highly impacted by weather – the warmer it gets, the higher the sales. But we couldn’t count on weather as Finland has definitely not been blessed with sunshine in recent summers.

The objectives were to increase sales from last year by 3 % (10 billion €) by not lowering prices and to gain more market share (+0,2 %) during the summer season.

Films were the core of the campaign. The story takes us to the near future, to Fall 2017 – a sudden snowstorm has taken everyone by surprise and one particular family is stuck at their summer cottage. Memories start to grow sweeter with time and everyone seem to remember the summer ending a little bit differently.

In Print & OOH we used current themes and events as we reminded people that winter could come at any moment. For Online, we created summer’s Bucket List that inspired and motivated Finns to live their lives to the fullest.

We collaborated with Spotify and let people make their own Grilling playlists, depending on the occasion. We even rewrote a Finnish classic and made it to a catchy rap song. It was #1 on Spotify’s viral list for three weeks in a row! People even made their own versions of the song in YouTube.