Objectives
Southern Co-op wanted to maximise the impact of its ‘Pop In and Win’ promotion during the peak summer period, encouraging more shoppers to visit stores and engage with the brand. A key challenge was reaching local communities effectively whilst maintaining broad regional coverage, ensuring Southern Co-op remained front-of-mind throughout the promotional period.
The campaign needed to achieve three key objectives:
- Increase awareness of the promotion across Southern Co-op's core trading regions.
- Encourage shoppers to choose Southern Co-op over competing convenience retailers.
- Drive increased footfall to Southern Co-op’s stores.
Our Approach
To deliver both scale and local relevance, we developed a multi-channel media strategy that combined broad-reaching awareness activity with highly targeted digital activation.
Regional radio to build brand recall
Traditional media played an important role in reinforcing campaign awareness, at scale.
Targeted radio activity across Heart Solent, Greatest Hits Radio South Coast and Isle of Wight Radio provided strong regional coverage within Southern Co-op's operating areas. The aim was to deliver high-frequency exposure, helping to embed the ‘Pop In and Win’ message in consumers' minds during everyday listening.
Creating standout with Out of Home
To cut-through competitor noise, we added a mix of digital and paper Out of Home. Roadside 6-sheets in the proximity of stores were used to ensure the offer was top of mind for shoppers in the area. This was supported by Bus advertising with Streetliner and T-Side formats making the offer unmissable, locally.
YouTube video for mass reach and awareness
YouTube was used to reach audiences across devices, with a strong focus on Connected TV placements for high-impact, large-screen viewing. We targeted parents of school-age children, overlaid with geo-targeting to deliver reach and frequency among the target audience. Short-form video creative ensured the promotion and key messaging were communicated within the first few seconds, maximising impact regardless of whether viewers skipped the ad.
Increasing coverage across all key regions through Programmatic and Meta
Supporting the large-scale traditional media channels, we planned Programmatic and Meta campaigns focused on proximity targeting around every store. This helped us reach audiences mainly on mobile, keeping the campaign visible to target consumers while they were shopping locally.
Programmatic campaigns combined geo-targeting with convenience shopper signals to reach active shoppers. This included an element of competitor-led targeting to divert shoppers towards Southern Co-op.
To maximise the available audience, Meta campaigns focused purely on store proximity targeting with the objective to build reach and frequency, in the moment.
Performance Max to capture Intent
To complement upper-funnel activity, Performance Max campaigns were implemented giving further exposure across Google properties. Store location was the foundation of targeting, with Affinity audiences used to capture those with high likelihood of being a convenience shopper. Performance Max activity has the added benefit of encouraging Maps interactions leading to potential store visits.
Results
Over 26 million impressions were delivered alongside 963k digital OOH ad plays and 5.8m impacts from Radio.
The campaign over-delivered against the planned 17m impressions from paid social, programmatic, video and PMAX. Both Radio and OOH achieved full delivery.
Additionally, the PMAX campaign delivered 35k ‘get directions’ conversions and tracked 39.5k store visits.
The Impact on brand
Beyond measuring campaign delivery, it was important to assess whether this high level of brand exposure translated into a measurable positive impact. We did this by comparing data pre, during and post campaign to see if key metrics were uplifted whilst the campaign was active.
A review of website performance data showed a clear positive impact from the campaign while activity was live. Comparing the 53 days prior to launch with the 29-day campaign period, Southern Co-op recorded:
- 31% increase in average daily sessions
- 28% increase in average daily new users
- 5% increase in page views per session
- 2% increase in average session duration
This indicates that the campaign not only drove more visitors to the website but also encouraged greater engagement with the brand.
Following the campaign, performance metrics declined:
- 34% decrease in average daily sessions
- 38% decrease in new users
- 21% decrease in page views per session
This post-campaign downturn provides strong evidence that the uplift observed during the activity period was directly influenced by the integrated media campaign, reinforcing its effectiveness in driving measurable brand impact and customer engagement.
The integrated media strategy ensured the 'Free Shops' promotion remained front of mind across Southern Co-op's key trading regions. The result was a campaign that not only exceeded delivery expectations but also generated increases in online engagement and overall brand exposure.
- 31% increase in average daily website sessions
- 28% increase in average daily new website users
- 5% increase in page views per session
- 2% increase in average session duration
Lucy Avison, Commercial Manager, Marketing and Engagement, Southern Co-op said:
"'Pop In and Win' was our hero summer campaign, designed to bring a real sense of fun and excitement to our customers’ everyday shop. We wanted to give it genuine scale, but it was equally important that we showed up strongly and relevantly in the communities around our stores. The media mix gave us that balance - building wider awareness across our trading area, while allowing us to be much more targeted locally. We were really pleased with the reach we achieved and, importantly, to see that awareness translated into increased engagement and action at store level."
31% increase in website sessions
28% increase in new website visitors
5% increase in paghe views per session
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