In Denmark, grocery chain SPAR is located in the small towns.

They are threatened by depopulation and big supermarkets opening nearby, and like most other local shops they are struggling to survive.

For years, the tendency has been clear: One by one, stores have closed down. And customers have been driving to the big supermarkets nearby instead of shopping local. For SPAR – a chain of independent grocers placed primarily in the small towns – this tendency was noticeable.

Changing this behavior was not only critical to SPAR. But also to the small towns of Denmark. So we wanted to remind the Danes of who they were letting down, by bringing them back on first name terms with their local grocer.

With “The Name Change” we closed down all 121 SPAR stores across Denmark, and when we opened again we had replaced the logo on the store fronts with the name of the local grocer, so people could go shopping at: “Thomas”, “Peter”, “Lars” and “Ellen”. But we didn’t stop there - their names were used everywhere. This captured the attention of the Danish public, who got back on first name terms with their local grocer. Suddenly, SPAR was in the news and a hot topic on social media. The campaign ignited a national conversation about the importance of keeping the local grocers alive. And became so popular that it ended up as a trivial question in the popular trivia board game Bezzerwizzer.

The campaign outperformed all objectives and resulted in:

• 68% of Danes reached through PR

• 4632% ROMI

• 18,3% sales increase

• 31% increase in customer loyalty

• 20% increase in number of SPAR stores across the country

With the campaign we gave people a reason to shop local again. And ignited SPAR’s ambition to keep the local towns alive. This earned SPAR more than 5 mentions in the latest report from the Danish government on small town areas and set an example of how local initiatives can save the struggling small towns of Denmark. Making it official that SPAR is One of the locals.