‘The Name Change’ campaign was designed to remind customers of the person behind the counter and the value of having a local store in town. The positioning of most supermarkets in Denmark fall into two main categories: Either discount stores with low prices, or food markets with high quality and lots to choose from. SPAR was neither of the two, so we needed to find something else for SPAR to stand for. As a chain with 121 independent grocers, SPAR outlets around the country are widely different. They are formed by the individual grocer’s preferences and the surrounding communities. We decided to make a virtue of this particular trait and created an idea focusing on the proximity and local connection to the stores. This reminds people who they are supporting when they buy local.

One night in April 2016 we closed down all 121 SPAR stores across the country. The next morning we reopened them in the name of the local grocer. All 121 SPAR stores were rebranded and had their store owners name on the front. Instead of passing by SPAR, the local customers were passing by ‘Torben’, ‘Kristian’, ‘Malene’ and 118 other local shops. The Name Change® made every potential customer in the area know their grocer by their 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 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, in other words, more than 68% of the entire Danish population. This was reached through national TV, national newspapers online as well as local TV picking up on the story. All in all it earned 1.8 million dollars worth of PR-value.

But most importantly it increased sales by 30%. Since The Name Change, SPAR has acquired new customers, increased frequency, and increased basket size for its’ customers in store. Last but not least, customer loyalty has increased by 50 % from June 2014 to June 2016.

The Name Change started a conversation about the value of the local grocer not only locally, but nationwide. It drove more customers into stores, got them to spend more money, and encouraged them to come back.

PR is the development of relations between an organisation and the public. This principle is at the heart of our campaign. By changing the name on the storefronts of all 121 SPAR stores, to the name of the local grocer that owns it, ‘The Name Change’ campaign brought the public closer to SPAR and got Danes on first name basis with the brand. With no media spend, The Name Change started a national conversation about shopping locally. Along with 68% of the population, news outlets talked about shopping local. Now the public not only talk about SPAR, but with SPAR.

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 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 make the local grocer the hero of the story.

SPAR is a retail chain in Denmark that consists of independent grocers. The outlets are based primarily in small towns and rural suburbs. In recent years people from these areas have been heading to bigger towns to do their shopping, consequently this has caused many small town shops to go out of business. The challenge was to create an activation for SPAR that would differentiate them from their bigger competitors, and give people in these neighbourhoods a reason to shop local again… to support their local grocer. The main objective was to change the perception of SPAR in the eyes of the local consumers and increase traffic to the stores. To do this we knew we had to create a conversation around SPAR that moved people emotionally enough to physically act.