Context:

PlazaVea is the Peruvian supermarket with more coverage in the Peruvian territory, which is committed to provide “low prices every day.” Its main competitors are the other two supermarket big chains: Tottus and Metro. The three of them conglomerate most of the modern channel SOM and share the commercial format of “Everyday low prices”, and that is where the strategic and creative fights take place.

A year before the campaign, in 2017, PlazaVea had lowered its most important indicator: “low prices perception”, from 44% (September 2017) to 37% (June 2018.) That forced us to take an action in order to revert that tendency, decisively making our positioning apparent.

Our challenge: How do I take possession of the “Everyday low prices” territory, where the whole category wants to be?

The event of the year:

In 2018, after 36 years, Peru classified for the World Cup – soccer is the most popular sport in the country- becoming the most important event for Peruvians in the last decades, which united the whole country. Given the historical fact to get back to a World Cup after more than 3 decades, it was predictable that the largest consumer brands would gather around that fact and the retail industry would not be the exception.

The challenge was how to “hack” at a communication level, without being the sponsor of the Peruvian team and without sponsoring the TV transmission, but have impact, in an unforgettable and charismatic manner, without abandoning its strategic territory.

Capitalizing a climate of euphoria:

It was estimated between 40 000 and 60 000 Peruvians would travel to Russia. The spirits were so high Peruvians of all social classes would travel, spending their savings, getting into debt with loans, selling their cars, even mortgaging their homes to be able to pay for the trip and follow the team. However; something they had not considered is that Russia is a country 14’000 km away and everything was up to 3 times more expensive than in Peru.

When we realized that, our promise to provide low prices every day for Peruvians became more relevant for these fans who gave everything possible at the economic level to go with their team to Russian, and who needed to stay there for over two weeks.

Creativity:

Peruvians who travelled needed to save money in order to support their food expenses and who better than us, the Peruvian supermarket committed to offer low prices everyday to Peruvians, to make possible the savings they so urgently needed all the way to Russia.

That’s how “Perussian Prices” was born. We decided to transfer our low prices over 14,000 km.

We installed 3 PlazaVea stores in Russia, located at each place where the Peruvian team would play: Saransk, Yekaterinburg and Sochi. After long negotiations, we made alliances with 3 local supermarkets to turn them into PlazaVea stores. Every Peruvian who would present his/her Peruvian ID would buy the products for the same price they would pay in Peru at a PlazaVea store.