Convenience retail giant, One Stop has had an incredible start to 2020 by reflecting on a successful year of campaigns that saw its reach increase by more than 440 per cent on 2018 – mainly thanks to a magical little elf over Christmas!
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Over the past year One Stop has worked hard to launch innovative marketing campaigns in a bid to further the brand’s reach, introduce new customers to the popular neighbourhood stores and help its growing franchise portfolio.
From the ‘Great Advent Giveaway’ executed a year ago, which reached 6.5 million, through to mid year’s ‘Passport to Summer’ which reached 19.1m, the ‘Find Eddy’ mechanic over Christmas 2019 reached in excess of 28.7 million customers.
When it launched in November 2019, One Stop became the first convenience store retailer ever to introduce an augmented reality (AR) app as a customer experience and it proved to be a huge hit with colleagues and customers alike.
The ‘#FindEddy’ app invited customers to find Eddy the Elf and his friends, Edwina, Old Eric, Auntie Elsie and Baby Elfy, in store in exchange for thousands of prizes, which included a trip to Lapland for a family of four! Eddy merchandise and online games were also introduced to create further engagement with customers, as well as to profit national charity partner, The Alzheimer’s Society.
Outperforming its competitors over the Christmas period, One Stop saw an increase of seven per cent in followers across social and mobile platforms with 170,000 app downloaded and more than 65,000 elves caught – clearly catching the imagination of customers in the process.
Head of Customer at One Stop Nigel Prendergast said: “We did something that had never been done before when we launched the first retail AR app so didn’t know what to expect. However, the commitment of our colleagues, franchisees and customers who took part has meant we have set a new standard across the industry.
“As a retailer which is driven to innovate and inspire, we’ve continually added to our offering over the past year from our first ever One Stop customer competition last Christmas (2018), to our Easter ‘Rule the Roost’ campaign, where we became mobile responsive.
“The latest campaign has seen another huge step change with Find Eddy where we also trialled Google Display Mobile Ads. The retail industry benchmark figure for engagement via this type of Google advertising is 0.5%, whereas ours was 0.7%, so it’s been an exciting and very positive time for the brand and a great way to start the new year.”
The Find Eddy campaign saw a fully integrated marketing approach which also included website support, proactive PR and emails focusing on Weekly Deals, tantalising recipe ideas and updates on Eddy and his family of Elves!
Sunder from One Stop Leamington Spa comments: “The Christmas promotions worked incredibly well for us this year and we saw a 12% increase on like for like sales compared to Christmas 2018.
“Staff were highly engaged with the #FindEddy mechanic and encouraged customers to get involved with the interactive game. This drove continued interest and footfall throughout the season.
“The social media content was effective to support the campaign and customers became real fans of the large cardboard POS cut-out of Eddy!”
One Stop is currently planning the rollout of its new activations which looks set to build on the success of Eddy the Elf and its previous campaigns. As Nigel concludes, “We’ve had chickens laying Easter eggs and hiding elves in 2019, so watch this space for 2020!”
