“FreshChoice have been a proud sponsor of the Kepler Challenge for eight years, and as a sponsor, we've behaved exactly as you'd expect: teardrop banners, branded hoardings, t-shirts, etc. With the advent of FreshChoice's new brand platform: 'That's Shopping Different,' we asked ourselves what does 'Supporting Different' look like? We know how difficult the Kepler challenge is for any runner, and wanted to show our support to this incredible community but we needed to execute through the lens of ‘Different’."

- FreshChoice Head of Marketing, Travis Tompsett

We put a supermarket aisle stocked with everything endurance athletes needed 50kms into one of the most remote and hardest ultramarathon races in the world.

The target was 450 incredibly tired (but incredibly passionate) endurance athletes.

Most sponsors just slap their logo on a race. Freshchoice saw this as a chance to prove their new Brand Platform ‘That’s shopping different.

So we did something that actually helped runners get to the finish.

The beauty of the idea was that Freshchoice didn’t have to pretend to be something they’re not – by putting their service in an unusual place they made it highly desirable and something people wanted to talk about.

The familiar elements of a supermarket aisle signage, wobblers, music and announcements became magical and entertaining elements in the leafy green environment.

But an incredible amount of thought also went into the design and construction, so that the aisle was elevated off the forest floor, carried in by hand and there were custom bins provided so there was no impact on the environment.

The Kepler Challenge takes on average 8 hours to complete so runners had been runnings for at least 4-5 hours before seeing the Aid Aisle.

The comments from runners and on running forums during the event were incredible and they have demanded it return next year.

The Aid Aisle turned a sponsorship for an event for 450 elite athletes into a story resulted in over 80 pieces of content and reached millions.

Thousands of products were sampled with over 90% of runners taking something and cardboard bags allowed them to have items delivered to the finish for them. Each product supplier was also given unique content of their product in-situ, to share.

In New Zealand supermarkets have been suffering from bad press after Covid - the sentiment of the Aid Aisle was 100% positive - which is a big step in winning back trust.