Case study

The Southern Co-Operative: Freshers Fair

The Southern Co-Operative is an independent regional business owned by its members. Established in Portsmouth (Hampshire) over 140 years ago, they now run more than 250 community food stores and funeral homes across eleven counties in Southern England.

The brief

The objective of the campaign was to encourage students and freshers to shop at The Southern Co-op stores. As well as building awareness for discount offers such as 10 NUS discount and 20% one-off discount, Southern Co-op were also keen for the students to sign up to the All Yours program.

The Southern Co-Operative: Freshers Fair gallery image

Mechanics

The campaign saw us provide three Brand Ambassadors per store; their job was to hand out promotional materials and discount codes and engage with students by offering samples of Co-op’s baked products. As part of this promotion, it was important for the Ambassadors to ensure that students (who would have been new to the area) knew where to find their local stores to take advantage of discounts.

Using our purpose-built microsite, our ambassadors also helped students sign up for the All Yours scheme when engaging with them.

Results

The campaign was highly effective, resulting in:

4,500 people engaged

1000+ samples distributed

Deliverables

Data Capture

Merchandising

Product Sampling

Promotional Staffing

Our first ever Freshers Fair was a huge success, and we were hugely helped by the GottaBe! team! The guidance and advice on the best approach for engaging with students was invaluable.

Together we came up with a formula that the students seemed to really enjoy on the day and even better, resulted in visits to our stores in the city centre. The student market is of real value to us as a retailer and we’ll definitely be calling on GottaBe! to support us with the planning and delivery of our future student-focussed campaigns.