The closer a product gets to expiring, the fastest supermarkets need to sell them. So, they drop the prices. But if there aren’t enough people in the store to see it, products end-up stuck on the shelf. A waste, not only for the business, but for consumers and society. Supeco, Carrefour’s low-cost supermarket chain, saw in the waste problem an opportunity to create a win-win promo, activated by geo-location.

To promote products with a short lifespan... Supeco used a format with a short lifespan: sponsored ads on The Instagram Stories. The ephemeral media space that lives 24 hours only. The products about to expire got their own media space and offer, impacting the right people in the right place. Using geolocation, the discounts were shown in a 1km radius from each store, reaching and attracting those nearby. The offers lasted the same as the stories... 24 hours only.

Every day, Supeco, Carrefour’s low-cost supermarket chain, deals with the issue of merchandise expiring and impending waste problem. But when each branch has different products about to expire, we need to look at each of them individually. So we chose a medium that allows us to reach the right people in the right place: Instagram Stories. First, we used Instagram’s geolocation to target Supeco’s neighbors in a 2km radius, most of which probably regular clients. Once the supermarket’s products were about to expire, its prices dropped significantly. We then sold the products with short lifespan in a format with a short lifespan, 24 Hours only. Choosing a social media platform that catches consumers on-the-go in the store’s neighborhood created a sense of urgency to our offers. Consumers could just check the offers on their mobile devices and run to the nearest store, generating more in-store traffic and conversion.

Supermarket retail communication is hard-selling by nature. But to sell products about to expire faster and more effectively in Madrid, Supeco needed more than just sell hard: it had to sell smart. And by choosing Instagram as a partner, they did just that. The specifics of the media plan included reaching only people in a 2Km radius of each store and only during each store’s opening hours. Every day, the price of a different product dropped significantly for that day only. That matched perfectly its media’s short-lived format that lasts just 24h: the Insta-stories. The plan covered 6 distinct regions of Madrid, each within a different Supeco store’s radius.

In the very first promo:

252849 Impressions

202238 people reached

Some records in sales:

- 1 chicken per minute

- 250 strawberries boxes sold in 4 hours