Lidl is a challenger in Sweden. They compete with local legacy brands that outspend Lidl many times over in terms of marketing. Therefore, we are smart about social media and leverage the power of Instagram, Facebook and Twitter in as many ways as possible. This in order to get brand and product messaging to our target groups on a smaller media budget.

We have an ongoing brief to constantly monitor current events and trending topics that can help Lidl in Sweden to communicate their main message “food of the highest quality to the best possible price” using Lidl local social media.

The objective is to build the local fan base, create organic reach, earned media and positive brand engagement.

It started with a Reddit post, a childhood memory. Someone recalled how he, while playing with friends in their homes during the 80’s, never was invited for dinner - but instead had to wait in the friend’s room. The online recognition turned out to be total and social media soon flooded with identical stories. Even a hashtag emerged, #swedengate, under which the debate grew intense. What is wrong with us swedes? Are we socially unskilled? Egocentric? Stingy? Or are we really that poor that we can’t offer our children’s friends food?

A perfect storm for Lidl.

So, we made one simple social media post, from the Lidl account. With a picture of a very traditional Swedish dinner sausage, popular among kids. And the copy “Stroganoff for everyone. Even the friend waiting in the room”. And a price tag, pointing out the very affordable and competitive price.

We are constantly searching for trending topics, current events and online discussions that are directly, or somewhat, related to food culture and pricing. Lidl doesn’t have to be the topic of the conversation, it’s actually better if they are not. What we want is an issue or an event that gets the juices flowing for the broad masses and that Lidl can contribute to with a solution, an offer, or a laugh. Most often it will be a news story that is starting to go viral that Lidl will comment on by posting a product message related to the story in local brand social media channels which are suited for that type of fun witty communication. Timing and tonality is key and we have a great recipe for Lidl as the challenger not afraid to make fun about themselves and be a bit quirky in comparison to the competition.

As we could see that many Swedes shared childhood memories in social media of being asked to wait in their friend’s room while he or she had dinner with their family, we decided to create a social media post about that happening as our real-time response to Swedengate.

For Lidl Instagram and Lidl Facebook in Sweden we created a single social media post using the hashtag #swedengate picturing a local Swedish Lidl-sausage with the copy “Stroganoff to everyone. Even the friend waiting in your room.” The caption then read “Did you also have to wait in your friend’s room when you friend had dinner with the family? Lidl stretches every dollar so that everyone can eat. That’s Lidl”.

2,8 million in potential reach (total Swedish population 10,3 million)

11 000 likes

1100 comments

Free positive publicity in local and trade media as well as international press.