Intermarche: The Right Vegetables

Credits & Description:

Client: Intermarché
Product (Service): Vegetables
Agency: Romance Paris, France
Entrant: Romance Paris, France
Idea Creation: Romance Paris, France
Idea Creation 2: Intermarche Paris, France
Exectuive Creative Director: Alexandre Hervé (Romance)
President: Christophe Lichtenstein (Romance)
Planner: Romain Roux
 (Romance)
Copywriter: Damien Veillet (Romance)
Copywriter: Patrice Dumas (Romance)
Creative: Vincent Boursaud (Romance)
Creative: Julien Bon (Romance)
Associate Director: Marie-Laure Dangeon (Romance)
Account Manager: Nicolas Andrieux (Romance)
Account officer: Estelle Littaye (Romance)
Agency Producer: Kyna David (Romance)
Agency Producer: Fabrice Bensahkoun (Romance)
Marketing Director: Caroline Puechoultres (Intermarché)
Marketing Manager: Vincent Bronsard (Intermarché)
Communications Director: Vincent Fièvre (Intermarché)
Communications Manager: Mathieu Delcourt (Intermarché)
Communication Officer: Véronique Legueult (Intermarché)
Communication Officer: Benjamin Brozek (Intermarché)
Director: Pierre Barougier
Synopsys:
The Campaign
We know how people behave on social media: they love pointing out any mistake from brands and social media managers. So, we decided to set a little trick.
We organized a massive vegetables promotional campaign. But we mixed up onions with fennels, cabbage with lettuce and cucumber with courgette. On purpose.
Obviously, we didn’t have to wait long to get massive complaints on social media. Outraged consumers blaming Intermarché for its lack of professionalism.
At the end of the day, we revealed the trick with a video showing people that are not that good at recognizing vegetables: children! A video that illustrates how much future adults need to be taught about vegetables.
Because to eat better, first you have to know what you are eating.
Creative Execution
The Right Vegetables is a two-times activation: a fake “bad buzz” that eventually turns into a “good buzz” for consumers.
But to make the buzz as bad as it can be, our major concern was to make our mistakes in the promotional campaign credible for random people. The less they would see the advertising campaign coming, the more spontaneous and natural their reaction would be.
The reveal film – the “good buzz” part - was shot exactly the same way: the children didn’t even know what they were coming for and none of their behavior is prepared or rehearsed.
This whole spontaneity prevents the campaign from a moralizing tone one can easily fall into when talking of a society issue such as children’s diet.
In total, the campaign triggered 6,5K mentions of the Intermarché on social media networks and 383K interactions with the brand’s publications, including 77K Facebook reactions and more than 20K comments, for a global engagement of 5,53% (whereas the average is generally around 1%).
The video went viral: we counted 1,5M view in only 24 hours, over 4M in just a few days, and 3,9K shares.
The landing page was visited more than 104K times and people stayed in average more than 30s on it. Plus, they clicked 12K times on all the content displayed and were directed to more information on the program, to the app download links and to the funny stories available in stores.
Besides, about 25 medias talked about the operation and the commitment of Intermarché in French schools.
The activation is built around four major medias : metro print and social media platforms that first aim at creating a « bad buzz » with a fake promotional advertising mistake ; and then a TVC and online spots that turn things into a « good buzz » by explaining the reasons of the campaign and promoting the commitment of Intermarché in French schools and city halls.
When trying to raise awareness regarding children, who are the best people to target? Parents of course!
With our fake promotional advertising campaign, we set up a media plan that would meet our 30-45 years old target along their everyday life mainly through metro prints and social media platforms. The objective was simple: make people react and interfere with Intermarché so that they would easily be exposed to our final reveal video that directs to a landing page where consumers can find all information about the education program. Besides this online consumer journey, the activation also echoed in Intermarché’s stores with dedicated communication kits and promotional offers on vegetables. And for children to become experts in fruits and vegetables, Intermarché launched a mobile app so that they can learn and play at home!