For decades, businesses relied on paper circulars to drive in-store traffic and sales. On average, 60%-70% of a retailer’s marketing budget is devoted to paper circulars.

The deficiency of a mass-printed circular is that retailer has to promote the same selection of products to everyone and it’s only relevant to some of the people. This is due to seasonal variation across the country and interest variation across customers.

More concerning for Canadian retail giant Sport Chek, research shows majority of theirs customers are no longer reading paper circulars, especially the core audience between 18-34. The future of Sport Chek’s business depends on adapting to millennials’ digital behavior and needs: ease, personalization, and pleasant surprises.

Innovation on circular has been primitive, i.e. inserting the same paper circular online. This alternative hasn’t been effective because it is hard to find, unappealing, and presents the same irrelevant product choices. With no incremental value and insufficient reach to impact sales, ‘digital circulars’ are only used as a complement to paper circular, and not a replacement.

After 3 tests of increasing scope over past 18 months, Sport Chek, is the first retailer in the globe that executed a cost-effective way to reinvent the paper circular.

Sport Chek needed new technology to reach their customers digitally and get them to the store. To do so, Sport Chek partnered with Facebook to solve this problem because:

1) Facebook reaches 70% of Internet users in Canada, over half of them visit Facebook daily.

2) Facebook’s data and targeting can increase relevancy of products.

3) Facebook’s News Feed is a beautiful canvas that’s platform agnostic - spanning from iOS to Android, desktop to mobile.

The product is the ‘Social Flyer’, an innovative approach that uses interests, demographics, weather patterns and location data to promote fewer, but more relevant products, to millions of people. Like yoga pants to yoga lovers, or ski gear when snow falls early. Weekly reach online is always maintained comparable to paper circular.

If Facebook News Feed is the new personalized newspaper, then Social Flyer has the ability to be headline news everyday. Knowing the News Feed is a personal and privileged space, the biggest achievement was creating beautiful, relevant content that people found useful. Social Flyer creative required a new level of visual intrigue, compelling copy and storytelling. To remain true to Sport Chek’s “Your Better” brand positioning, custom photography of products and lifestyle content were produced. Monday to Wednesday, targeted audiences would receive lifestyle content that educates and inspires. Thursday to Saturday, new and useful products would be promoted similar to Paper Circular drop timing. This weekly rhythm of storytelling motivates a healthy lifestyle and teaches shoppers to look for content instead of deep discounts.

After 3 test campaigns over 18 months with increasing reach and scope, Social Flyer is proven to drive sales and profitability in absence of paper. Sport Chek aims to expand Social Flyer to more weeks and shift 25% of print spend to digital and Facebook.

Because Social Flyer’s distribution is comparable to paper circular, this enabled us to measure perception changes via Nielson Brand Effect. During the 10-week test in 2013, Social Flyer increased awareness of weekend sales by 40% and increased purchase intent by 32% among targeted Canadians. More importantly, test regions with Social Flyer augmentation achieved a higher sales lift vs. control regions with paper circulars only, as proven by Sport Chek’s POS tracking.

As testing scope increased in 2014, for the first time in history, Sport Chek pulled all paper circulars out of the market for 2 weeks and replaced with Social Flyer. During this paperless period, national in-store sales grew 12% year-over-year. As a result, Sport Chek aims to transition more than 25% of print spend to digital and Facebook in the next year.

The Social Flyer revolutionized Sport Chek’s retail approach and is world’s first truly paperless alternative to driving in-store traffic and sales. Stemming from this success, Sport Chek’s parent company - Canadian Tire, has already started to test this new approach. Inspired by Sport Chek’s case study shared around the world, retailers globally are re-thinking their current paper circular effectiveness and innovative digital alternatives.