We have all heard the phrase “Data is the new oil” and for long multinational companies have been harvesting it to sell it to highest bidder or to target ads based on it. This has lead to on going data leaks and misuse of collected data. Only thing that matters is generating profit for the owners.

S-group wanted to fight back and democratised all of its data to serve its owners, the customers. S-group is co-op and owned by its customers so their ultimate goal is to serve their customers.

The objective for the app was to help people do better purchase decisions by using the real time data gathered from all of the purchases. Our hypotheses was that this would help S-group to keep their market share and people using the app would be more loyal when using S-group stores they would see their eating and consuming habits.

In post GDPR world we used the gathered data and interest towards their own data as tool for gaining awareness for the campaign. Instead of asking for your data from multinational company and maybe getting it months later in 9000 page pdf, people could just load the app and see all the data s-group had gathered of you in nicely visualised and useful manner.

Your data application data is gathered when loyal customers shop in S-group stores. The big difference is that instead of using it to target adds or to sell it to FMCG brands S-group uses the data to help you do better decisions.

Purchase data is compared to model that counts out CO2 emissions based on the product type, origin, package size and multiple other factors and compared to Finnish average to show how your behaviour differs from the mass. On top of CO2 emissions, share of local food and vegetables, meat and how much you spent on each category is gathered and brought to your data application real time.

Your data application was targeted to current customers of S-group. By showing how much data was gathered in positive way our goal was spark conversation on how much data is gathered and who it benefits.

Your data is truly yours.

The app was launched in April 2019. Your data application was pushed mainly via PR, digital media and s-group stores. The app quickly gained news visibility in major Finnish newspapers. This was first time anyone had opened all their data to customers.

By using the data and its visualisation as tool and medium to generate awareness and coverage in Finnish national news. All we had to do on top of that was to remind people to download the app in digital media and in stores.

Your data application was quickly adopted, 10% of Finnish population use the app. Your data increased customer loyalty. People increased their purchases on S-group on average by 13,9 % after installing the app compared to time before. This kind of two digit increase in sales revenue in Finnish 18,5 Billion Euro grocery industry is unheard of.

Showing people their purchase patterns lead to drastic changes in behaviour. Half (48%) of people changed their buying behaviour . People started eating more vegetables and local food and cut their CO2 emissions.

All this by showing people their own data instead of selling it to highest bidder.