Over the past 3 years, Intermarché, the third largest food retailer in France, has decided to move away from the fierce price war practiced in its category to stand out from the clutter and win back market shares. The brand became the first in the industry to build a successful emotional territory in order to help people eat a little better everyday and entice them to shop at Intermarché.

In 2019, Intermarché turned 50. Hence, customers were expecting the food retailer to reward them with rebates and gifts the way they usually are for brand anniversaries. Intermarché wanted once again to stand out from the clutter, reward customers beyond the anniversary promotions usually practiced in the industry and above all re-create surprise again, while the brand had made itself well-known for its emotional territory over the past 3 consecutive years.

In a world evolving at breakneck speed, we made the choice to pause time and make people travel back to their “good old days”, 50 years back.

We brought back to life and re-launched in-store a large set of iconic products that were sold in the first Intermarché stores in the 70s and that have sadly disappeared from our shelves. We’ve selected products that have an iconic universe and a very specific story, every single French person can connect with.

Not only are the products from the past, so is the campaign. We’ve developed a campaign that feels like advertising from the 70s, is deeply rooted in iconic cultural French references and triggers strong happy memories. French consumers are dreaming about the old good days; we rewarded them with a trip back to the 70s, filled with positive feelings and happiness. Because connecting with customers is, like always, about emotion.

To stand out from the clutter, Intermarché wanted once again to go beyond anniversary promotions usually practiced in the category and decided to leverage the 50th anniversary as a way to re-connect with its customers on a more in-depth emotional level.

An anniversary is for everyone the perfect timing to look back and analyze how things have changed. Recent studies have shown that about 70% of French people think that it was better in the good old days, especially compared to the impersonal digital the world has entered and the hectic lifestyle people are leading today.

So Intermarché decided to fight for the exonostalgia that suddently hit French people and took the route of retromarketing by bringing up positive memories and emotions from the past cherished times. A smart way to show that Intermarché has a lot more to share than just products or promotions with its customers: memories.

Intermarché carried out an industrial prowess hand-in-hand with manufacturers by bringing back to all the Intermarché stores consumers’ favourite iconic products in their 70s packaging, such as the Nivea cream and the laughing cow cheese.

To re-launch these vintage products, we made the most famous speaker from the 70s, Evelyne Leclercq, return to our TV screens and offer viewers a journey through time. We used archive images of her from that time, recreated her mouth and recorded her voice. Through these old images, she presented the evening TV program the way she used to back in the days, but also announced the come-back of the products.

What’s more, we’ve created a vintage print and social media campaign, using the old Intermaché logo and deeply rooted in French iconic cultural references from the 70s, from the Citroën “deudeuche” family car to the iconic “booms” parties where teenagers share their first dance.

Beyond the 12,5M contacts we reached on TV, the campaign generated a lot of reactions and conversations on social media with more than 15M impressions triggered.

In only one week, more than 250 000 products were sold across the Intermarché stores in France. All the products manufactured got sold, and when these were not available in-store anymore, people even started re-selling the products themselves on eBay.

The activation made the sales increase by +16% and the average basket by + 8% during the period of campaign. Moreover, the sales increased by +9,48% and the average basket by 6% compared to the same period of time in 2018.

What’s more, the campaign helped recruit more than 86 000 new customers and retain the existing ones in one of the most challenging industry.