Challenge:

• mySupermarket.co.uk, the grocery shopping and comparison site, briefed Lansons to position the website as the destination site for food shoppers when looking for nutritional information and advice, as well as raising the brand's profile to drive traffic to the site.
• The campaign needed to strike a chord with consumers across all regions of the UK, and particularly with mums as the principal shoppers in family households.

Solution:

• To tap into the news agenda's focus on consumer behaviour changes as a result of the recession, Lansons created a news campaign that looked to reveal how more consumers are opting for cheaper, unhealthier, convenience foods since the onset of the recession in 2007 and how sales of fruit and vegetables have declined as a result of the perceived, but often unfounded, notion that healthy foods are more expensive.
• This story provided a newsworthy and educational story to position mySupermarket.co.uk' as an expert in nutritional food choices for consumers, while the use of the website's internal sales data to collate the figures showcased the brand as an expert in trends and the 'go to' website for food and grocery shopping.

Implementation:

• The campaign used a two-pronged approach to drive sustained coverage on this theme throughout the course of July 2009 to build awareness of mySupermarket.co.uk’s expertise as a food and nutrition destination website.
• The first story looked at which regions of the UK had the healthiest diets using sales figures of fruit and veg vs snack foods to lay a foundation that mySupermarket.co.uk is used by shoppers across the UK, affirming that there is indeed still a North/South divide when it comes to nutrition and eating habits.
• The second story extended the data analysis to look at the change in diet driven by the recession and smoking ban in summer 2007, using sales figures for the increase of supermarket sales of takeaways, alcohol and cigarettes.
• The two stories were released to the wider news media, and following this bespoke exclusives were placed with the News of the World and the Evening Standard with additional stats to wrap up the overarching themes and messages of the campaign with larger features.
  

Outcome:

• The campaign generated 7 national news articles, and 84 articles in total across regional, consumer and online media. 80% of the coverage included a quote from mySupermarket.co.uk Marketing Manager Jonny Steel and 74% of articles included the key message positioning the website as a price comparison site.
• Additionally, the News of the World journalist commented that the story worked well for them too and they are keen to run more mySupermarket.co.uk stories in future.