The Background
Londis has 60-years of heritage in Ireland, with its retailers sitting at the heart of 120+ communities around the country. Every Londis is owned & run by Locals, every store is shaped by and for the local community it serves. The brand needed a proofpoint of this community ethos in its marketing mix, and it needed to be authentic. It needed to allow Londis to walk the walk as well as talk the talk; displaying its local ethos to national audiences while actively engaging retailers at the local level.
This campaign was shortlisted in the Best Use of TV Sponsorship category at the 2024 TAMI Awards
The Challenge
Regarding the competitive landscape, Londis competes for market share and footfalls with the biggest retailers in the market. The last number of years have seen a huge increase in the competitive landscape with top retailers such as Aldi, Dunnes Stores and Tesco increasing their investment into €10million+ territory. Londis cannot compete on a pure euro-to-euro basis in terms of building share of voice. It was of strategic importance to maximise on a modest marketing budget.
Londis’ 3 key objectives were:
1. Increase awareness of Londis’ ‘Local like You’ messaging.
2. Bring the idea to life for our customers.
3. Engage local retailers and give them something to be proud of.
The Strategy
Londis brand-tracking showed that being Irish owned and having a commitment to local suppliers are two of the top 5 ‘brand truths’ for Londis shoppers.
The brand needed an authentic proof point of this community ethos in its marketing mix.
We know that sponsorship is particularly adept at creating emotional connections between brands and consumers, something which was vital for the community message Londis was seeking to land. We also know from Byron Sharp’s work that these emotional connections are key helping to build mental availability, improving the likelihood of a brand being considered in purchase situations.
Investing in a sport sponsorship like the GAA or Irish soccer teams could help promote community credentials to a wide audience. But fees and activation costs for such activity are prohibitive. Event-based sponsorship is more accessible from a cost point of view but lacks a wide audience.
Core Sponsorship and Zenith know the power of TV and knew that a TV sponsorship would provide an audience of significant scale but in a cost-efficient manner.
This is why partnering with RTÉ across Ireland’s Fittest Family would be of strategic importance to Londis and would marry effortlessly with key objectives:
– Series 11 ran from late October into mid-December which allowed for a significant level of presence at the most expensive time of year to buy TV airtime at a cost-efficient price while also providing a strong lead in for the Christmas period which is an extremely competitive period for this sector
– IFF provides the perfect community-based platform. The show involves families from all over Ireland, working together to be named as the fittest family in the country. The spread of competing families is the perfect representation of Irish communities and offered the ideal opportunity to engage local retailers.
However, this strategy wasn’t going to work without a solid working relationship across multiple stakeholders, the breath of the activation was just too wide. The involvement was from the ground up.
- Londis worked with show producers Kite Entertainment and RTÉ to ensure the on the filming days, the competing families and crew were kept fed and watered by Londis – an activation that you don’t see, but is built on the foundations of community.
- Londis executed a full 360° campaign to bring the sponsorship to life beyond TV stings, but, TV played a key role in delivering on our objective of increasing awareness of Londis and its ‘Local like You’ messaging.
- Bespoke TV sponsorship creative and BVOD
- In show integration where jerseys worn by the competing families would all contain a Londis logo on the sleeve – a typical feature across sports jerseys, so this was seamless.
- The iconic Wall obstacle in the show’s drama-filled Eliminator round displayed the Londis logo.
- A new competition was ran in 2023, inspired by the IFF sponsorship. We teamed up with coach Davy Fitzgerald in a competition that would see 25 teams compete in trials and obstacles as seen on the real IFF programme
- a DMG digital partnership
- Londis and Teneo engaged with Davy Fitzgerald, to run a media day to promote the sponsorship.
- In store POS
These activations, combined with tje TV campaign, authentically embedded the Londis brand into the show’s narrative, solidifying its association as a real-life sports sponsorship beyond mere badging.
The Results
Londis research shows that awareness of their sponsorship of IFF increased from 17% in 2022 to 33% in 2023 – an amazing 94% increase YoY – showing our long-term association with the show is paying off and continuing to grow
IFF stings performed best against Londis’ key target of families with teenage children. Responses among this cohort outperformed B&A averages significantly against Appeal of the creative and how identifiable these stings were as belonging to Londis, while matching averages for persuasion (willingness to find out more about the brand).
Due to commercial sensitivity around sales data, Zenith cannot share specific ROI/sales uplift figures for this partnership, though they can say that Londis sales figures did experience an increase in 2023 compared to 2022. However, we can look at the value delivered vs fee paid, the earned media value derived from PR activation and the cost effectiveness of Londis social media activations.
When comparing the media spend on the sponsorship package vs the value delivered by the sponsorship performance, the value delivered by the partnership outstripped fee paid by a ratio of 3.6:1. Within this, Londis exposure on the jerseys & obstacle alone generated a ROI of 1.65:1 against the sponsorship fee paid.
Coverage of the media day with show talent Davy Fitzgerald generated a huge PR value for Londis across digital & social media, as well as press & radio.
“The driving force behind the success of season10 of IFF was a strong collaboration between the team in Core, Zenith, RTÉ Media Sales and Londis. Together we challenged ourselves to integrate this TV sponsorship into Longos stores across the country and into the hearts and mid of our shoppers. There has been a trust that was nurtured between all of us and we all had the same gold-to make the IFF sponsorship a huge success”
Gillian Rigley, Marketing Manager Londis
Credits
Brand:
Londis
Media Agency:
Zenith
Supporting agencies/teams:
Core Sponsorship
Teneo
RTÉ Media Sales
In the Company of Huskies
Award:
TAMI Awards Shortlist: Best Use of TV Sponsorship 2024