Outdoor is often a passive medium where brands talk at consumers. So we needed to change the way people think about sportswear while changing the way we treat outdoor advertising. Aldi fans were no longer just an audience, they were now co-creators in the content. By using their tweets and comments in our sportswear ads, they were integral to the execution, and unknowingly activated a legal loophole by saying the one word we couldn’t – Aldidas.

When it comes to groceries, Aldi is famous for offering alternatives to the big brands. Their products look the same and taste the same, the only thing they don’t do is cost the same. And that was the insight for our Like Brands Only Cheaper campaign, which was one of the most famous and successful retail campaigns of all time. The Like Brands campaign made British people fall in love with Aldi’s lookalike products, and fall in love with Aldi, helping it grow to the 4th biggest supermarket in the UK.

British people often talk about Aldi’s lookalike products. They make YouTube reviews about them. Write social posts about them. They even make TV documentaries about them. So, we knew we could rely on Aldi fans to name our sportswear for us on social. Because they’re ‘in on the joke’ too.

In the UK, Aldi is the Robin Hood of supermarkets. They borrow from the brands and give savings back to the people, and their low-cost lookalike products are loved by their millions of customers, but they’re not loved by the wealthy brands they borrow from. They often take Aldi to court, sue them, or send cease and desist letters.

Regardless, Aldi always fight for what is right for customers. They’ve done brilliantly at saving customers money on the food they eat, but what about the clothes they wear? Sportswear is a brand-dominated sector where the big brands control the high prices, so that felt like a good place to start. Only problem is, people don’t want to wear clothes from a budget supermarket. So, here’s the brief: make Aldi’s low-cost sportswear just as desirable and hyped as the big brands, and make it sell out.

Aldidas didn’t break the law, it broke the internet. Everybody was talking about our ads and sportswear with the stripes. But we still couldn’t say the name, but thankfully journalists did that for us, talking about Aldidas in over 50 major news outlets, with popular podcast hosts questioning ‘can Aldi really do that?’ We can, and we did, and all that buzz added up to over £1M in earned media.

Aldidas sportswear sold out in under 4 hours in-store and online, generating over £3M in sales and making it one of Aldi’s most successful product launches ever. We avoided the wrong side of the law, to do the right thing for Aldi’s customers – which was to save them 70% on sportswear. And the best bit? We never said Aldidas.

Aldi was named the most loved Supermarket on social in the UK. Their huge fan following often look forward to Aldi’s disruptive and funny view on the world, whether they’re hijacking cultural moments or hilariously interacting with their social community.

So we knew Aldi’s eager audience would love to get involved, and we also knew they’d say Aldidas, because they also love Aldi’s lookalike grocery products. They often look the same and sound the same, so when we showed them sportswear with three stripes, we know they’d say the one word we couldn’t - Aldidas.