Intermarché, the 3rd French food retailer, known for its campaigns (The "L’amour, L’amour" film – Sugar Detox - The Inglorious Fruits & Vegetables) is relentlessly looking for ways to improve eating habits of the French. Despite this wonderful brand ambition, the company was still negotiating early 2018 with large industrial brands to reward its clients with discounts on very attractive but not healthy products (such as Coke, Nutella and other sugar-based products everyone loves). It translated into in-store discounts applied to hundreds of products encouraging everyday 8 million of French to choose more industrial products over fruits or vegetables. As a result, more than $350 million are collected on French customer loyalty cards because they these not-so-healthy products. Can a brand ambition change a whole business model?

To truly help the French to improve their eating habits, and especially the more reluctant ones, Intermarché decided to change what definitely impacts behaviors of its highly price-sensitive customers: its loyalty program. On May 2nd 2018, the food retailer stopped rewarding customers who buy industrial products and started something that no competitor has ever dared: offer daily discounts on fruits, vegetables and organic products. For the first time, a food retailer chose to change its loyalty program to reward what people should buy instead of what they love buying. In a nutshell, the healthier you buy the more discounts you get on your loyalty card.

In France, 1 out of 3 people can’t afford fresh fruits and vegetable everyday. It’s more than 20 million people. These highly price-sensitive people represent a wide part of Intermarché’s customers, which has historically been the French food retailer offering the most discounts. By turning the loyalty program into The Healthy Loyalty Program, we wanted to change eating behaviors of 10 million of loyal customers with tight budget and who prefer buying industrial products than fruits or vegetables because it’s cheaper and tastier. By comparing the amount of money these discounts on fruits, vegetables and organic products represents ($150 million every year) to the sums invested by the French government to fight obesity (around $50 million every year), Intermarché realised how it can truly impact eating habits of a whole country.

On May 2nd 2018, Intermarché rolled POS advertising out on each of its 1800 stores. And all clients received an email inviting them to replace their old loyalty card (displaying a bold cookie) with cards displaying fresh and tasty slices of fruits of vegetables. In order to help them love fruits & vegetables, we started to send them monthly mailings showcasing the tastier ones, as well as seasonal fruits & vegetables. Rather than to stick to the usual customer-centric CRM campaign, we decided to announce this tiny revolution to everyone by launching the first TV campaign of Intermarché that puts loyalty under the spotlight. In order to convince the people who hate fruits and vegetables the most, we didn’t just reveal the new loyalty principle, but showed them –through a 45-second film- that the healthier they buy, the more money they get

The Healthy loyalty program had a direct impact on sales. The revenue of fruits, vegetables and organic products increased by 9% in 2018, three time faster than Intermarché’s growth. In the meantime, we observed a decrease of sales of sugar-based products. Indeed, Intermarché’s customers buying sweet products declined by 6% from early 2018 to late 2018. The new program increased the in-store traffic of loyal customers by 2% but above all, it convinced 1,2 million of French people to get the card to improve their eating habits. The total revenue of the French retailer increased by 3% in 2018.