With The Name Change we wanted to remind the customers of the person behind the counter and the value of having a local store in town.

The positioning of retail stores in Denmark fall into two different categories: Either discount stores with low prices or food markets with high quality and lots to choose from. As mentioned SPAR was neither of the two. We needed to find something else for SPAR to stand for.

As a chain with 121 independent grocers, the SPAR stores around the country were widely different. They were formed by the individual grocer’s preferences and the surrounding community. We decided to make a virtue out of this particular trait and created an idea focusing on the proximity and local connection to the stores.

Our hypothesis was that the customers had forgotten who they were letting down by driving to the bigger supermarkets.

One night in april 2016 we closed down all 121 SPAR stores across the country. And the next morning we reopened them in the name of the local grocer. All 121 SPAR stores were re-branded and had their store owners name on the front. Instead of passing by SPAR the local customers were passing by “Torben”, “Paul”, “Kristian” and “Malene”. The Name Change made every potential customer in the area know their grocer by first name.

To support the story of The Name Change we created a content tool kit with everything from shopping bags and name tags to filmed content and social media posts for the grocers to use.

The original plan was to change the names of the stores back to SPAR after a 3-week period. But the grocers convinced the central office to keep the names for almost half a year.

The Name Change not only got the conversation going in the local SPAR areas. It also got the attention of the national media with a total reach of 3,905.810 unique users exposed – or more than 68 % of the entire Danish population – and with over 1,8 million dollars’ worth of PR-value.

But more important it got sales up by 30 %. Since The Name Change SPAR has both managed to recruit new customers, increased frequency and increased basket size for the customers in store.

And last but not least the customer loyalty has increased by 50 % from June 2014 to June 2016.

The Name Change did start a conversation about the value of the local grocer – not only locally but nation-wide. But it also got more customers in to the stores, got them to spend more money and made them come back.

When you need to change the perception of a brand without hardly any budget, the most effective place to start is the physical presence. For a retail brand that presence is your store. That is why we decided to change the names of all 121 SPAR stores across the country and put the names of the local grocers on the store fronts. This got all of Denmark talking and proved the value of the local stores. It is a great example of how far the creative use of a specific media – like store fronts – can take you.

The Danish shoppers are notorious bargain hunters, this year hitting an all-time low on customer loyalty across retail chains. With SPAR being perceived as quite expensive and with a low media budget compared to competitors, we needed to do something different to break through the clutter. We needed to start a conversation, and preferably a conversation that would travel on its own, and attract the media as well.

But how could we start a conversation? How could we cut through the sleepy business-as-usual environment in the small towns? And how could we remind the potential customers to shop local?

We decided to use the one medium, every inhabitant in the nearby areas could not miss: The physical store front. We decided to show the customers exactly who they were letting down by driving to the next big supermarket. We decided to make the local grocer the hero of the story.

In Denmark SPAR is a retail chain consisting of independent grocers placed primarily in smaller towns and suburbs. Over the last years the tendency in these areas has been clear: The customers are driving to bigger towns to do their shopping and one by one the shops in the small town areas have closed.

SPAR was not known for their low prices. Nor were they known for high quality or selection. The brief was to create an activation for SPAR that would differentiate the chain from the competitors and give customers in the nearby areas a reason to shop local and support their local grocer.

The most important objective was to change the perception of SPAR in the eyes of the local customers and increase traffic to the stores. To do this we knew we had to create a conversation around SPAR that engaged the customers in the new story.