To mark their 150th anniversary, Sainsbury’s were determined to substantiate their ‘Live Well For Less’ brand promise with tangible positive action. Their solution: offer over 178,000 colleagues the chance to make their own contribution to Living Well, by volunteering for the causes that matter to them.

For Bath store manager Paul Robertson, the cause was clear. Paul manages a deaf colleague, Sam Book; and Sam himself is one of 35,000 deaf and hard of hearing shoppers in Bath. Inclusivity is important to the Bath team. Especially since, more often than not, those shoppers that need help won’t feel comfortable asking for it.

So when Sainsbury’s announced their Colleague volunteering initiative, Paul and his team suggested making Sainsbury’s Bath a more deaf-inclusive store. And in their suggestion, we spotted a bigger opportunity to improve not only Bath customers’ experience, but that of the 11 million deaf and hard-of-hearing shoppers UK-wide.

Our plan was simple: improve the experience of deaf colleagues and customers by creating a spectacularly inclusive environment for them to shop. So we decided to create the world’s first deaf-friendly sign language supermarket. Sainsbury’s would become Signsbury’s. The devil would be in the detail, so we ensured the re-branding would extend to the very last details of store signage and colleague badges.

Of course, creating a truly inclusive environment required collaboration at every stage. That meant enlisting local BSL school I Can Sign to come and teach our 100+ store staff sign language. And it meant co-creating the store experience with community groups like DeafPLUS and the Bath Deaf & Social Club, to design helpful signing interventions at every stage of the journey, from arriving in-store, picking groceries, to paying at the till. Signsbury’s would also become the store setting for digital content that could educate shoppers beyond Bath.

73% of Britain’s deaf people feel rejected by their hearing loss. Perhaps because so few hearing people are familiar with British Sign Language (BSL): of 151,000 BSL users, only 64,000 are hearing. So our strategy was simple: we would help our deaf community by using our store environment to raise BSL awareness, making it fun and appealing to learn.

In creating a spectacularly inclusive store environment, we also aimed to kickstart a bigger conversation about Deaf inclusivity. With the Bath store as our epicentre, we enlisted local charities and community groups as well as 178,000 colleagues to raise awareness organically through social. To deliver reach at scale we partnered with the Daily Mirror, in partnership with media agency PHD, to deliver the first signed national newspaper, as a complement to our community outreach. This would help ensure the message of Signsbury’s could travel beyond store walls.

Signsbury’s was a full week signing store takeover. On the morning of July 18 2019, Sainsbury’s was Signsbury’s, down to the last details of building and in-store signage and colleague badges. Decked out in new branding, with a hundred trained colleagues all keen to practice their BSL, the store quickly became a city-wide talking point. Colleagues and charity partners greeted shoppers at the entrance, with simple signing phrases. We installed smart signing screens throughout the store, demonstrating how to sign different words and phrases, including ‘milk’, ‘trolley’ and ‘bananas’. To get our younger shoppers involved, we even created a “Sign for a Snack” station offering free fruit.

To drive impact beyond store walls, we filmed a series of YouTube tutorials with Oscar-winning screenwriter Rachel Shenton. We enlisted the Mirror online to support the cause, making it the first ever signed national newspaper, with a signed masthead, stories, and BSL tutorials.

Signsbury’s was a week-long store takeover, but the campaign was unstoppable. We drove global media coverage, with more than 300 publishers praising the activation and a wave of social media support. Our strategy to overcommit had paid off: the evident colleague training, in-store builds and educational content made it clear this was a serious statement of purpose. Our audience recognised that:

- When surveyed, 94% had a positive view of the activation, with 84% agreeing that Sainsbury’s is active in the local community.

- Of those who saw the activation, 64% said they were more likely to shop at Sainsbury’s as a result.

- Current colleagues were quick to pronounce their pride in working for Signsbury’s, and generations of old colleagues reminisced about their own employment.

- 55,000 Mirror readers went on to learn to sign, and to date, 161,000 colleagues have learnt helpful signing phrases.