We brought the Tim Hortons restaurant coffee experience that Canadians love, to the coffee aisle of Canada’s largest grocery chain. Because the major barrier to purchase at retail was that Tim Hortons loyalists simply did not believe that Tim Hortons coffee made at home in a single serve machine would taste the same as the coffee they bought in restaurant, we literally built a Tim Hortons into the shelving of the coffee aisles in grocery stores. A friendly Tim's Team Member greeted pleasantly surprised customers and served them single serve coffee from the self-contained Tim Hortons that appeared to be part of the aisle, emulating the Tim Hortons restaurant experience in the coffee aisle at grocery. Sampling the coffee helped consumers overcome their purchase barrier and put Tim Hortons single serve in their shopping baskets. We filmed these in-store experiences, and used them for television advertising as well.

Implementation (147)

A mini Tim Hortons was built into the coffee aisles of Loblaw’s in Ontario and Quebec to cover the two biggest markets in Canada as well as English and French, Canada’s two official languages.

In addition to the customer in-store experiences, we implemented a media heavy up leading into and over weekends to capture the consumer and keep the brand top of mind throughout their weekly shopping habits. Additional advertising units included 00:30 TVC, 00:15 TVC and Online Video, and 00:10 TVC, 00:10

Timeline

In-Store Customer Experiences: September 22-25, 2015

TVC: 00:30s, :0015s and 00:10 on air October 26 x 5 weeks

TVC: 00:10 on air November 30 x 4 weeks

OLV: 00:15s November 2 x 4 weeks

Total time in market: 9 weeks

Placement

In-store, Television and OLV.

Scale

National in Scope

Business Impact (sales, donations, site traffic)

After just under 6 weeks in market, the results were:

- Tim Hortons single serve coffee gained 4.5 share points in the $1.1 billion Canadian coffee market

- Sales in total $ increased by 64%

- Tim Hortons jumped from the #4 position to the #1 Best Selling coffee in Canada for the first time in the 52-year history of the company.

Response rate

N/A

Impressions

There were no measurements for in-store impressions, but the resulting TVC achieved 925 GRPs for the first 5 weeks of the campaign.

Change in Behaviour

Consumers switched to Tim Hortons single serve coffee vs the competition:

- Tim Hortons single serve coffee sold 2.4 times faster than the competition

Consumer Awareness

Ad tracking indicated above average recall and intent to purchase scores amongst the target audience (Source: IPSOS ASI, Single Serve Campaign Report, Jan. 11, 2015)