The Campaign

We were in a tough position. There was a massive risk in moving too soon as a significant minority of customers had said they’d change supermarkets if bags were removed. Equally though with competitors entering the conversation if we stalled we may lose ground. Our creative move was to recognise that the conversation competitor activity was generating could unlock the right approach for us. The live conversation was around how much people were willing to pay for ongoing single-bag use, NOT about phasing usage out. We reviewed data the social conversation had generated and used it to guide our own business decision. What emerged was an understanding of the sentiment of New Zealanders, their view on, and need for, alternatives, and their overall intentions. Fused with traditional research, we made a measured decision to commit to and announce a unilateral phasing out of single-use plastic carrier bags.

Execution

Speed-to-market was crucial so we chose to announce through conversational and earned channels – PR, Facebook and selected influencers. We also engaged over 70 community groups for their support. We also approached the Mayors’ Forum seeking their support and to encourage other retailers to also make the commitment. We then set to communicate as follows: To ensure our leadership position we lead with PR and Social to push the announcement to as broad an audience as possible and encourage as large an “earned” response as possible. We then turned to Influencer channels to drive deeper engagement. Partners were briefed on key themes of conversation relevant to their followers. We also sent an eDM to one million customers to encourage further conversation through social and direct channels. Finally we briefed our staff and switched on instore POS to highlight the news and encourage the early take-up of reusable bags.

The campaign’s focus on PR and social to generate earned conversations paid off, with exceptionally high and positive coverage across all media. In the days following the announcement, our commitment reached a cumulative audience of 3.68 million via 108 media reports. News media were quick to jump on the announcement and posted questions on social feeds encouraging feedback, pushing the story further and further. Positive feedback came from customers and environmental groups and confirmed our key messages were understood. Our Facebook announcement was seen by over 695,000 people and received more than 30,000 responses, becoming Countdown’s most-viewed and engaged post. With our influencer partners our organic reach was 3x our paid reach. Following the announcement, a major competitor and other retail players announced their own phase out plans. In total we spent $48,800 (total media contributed $15,000) to drive the ad-spend equivalent of $220,150 - a return of 4.5x. Making this announcement in a competitive industry, where change can be risky, has been hugely positive for Countdown’s reputation. Off the back of our move, the New Zealand Government is now on board and last month announced its plan to rid the country of single-use plastic carrier bags by July 2019.

The Situation

There is huge, global concern around the environmental impact of single-use plastic bags. Despite a general consensus that these bags add to pollution in landfills, oceans and can harm marine life, there are many opinions on what to do to combat this. These opinions come, everyday, from consumers, pressure groups, the industry and government. A PR-campaign allowed us to join, analyse and lead a huge cultural conversation in New Zealand, working with our audiences to ultimately make the industry-defining move to phase out single-use plastic bags and remove 350,000,000 of these bags from circulation and the waste stream every year.

The Strategy

The first act was the analytics. This was a deeper-dive than simple social listening utilising a proprietal analytics platform. Over 7,740 comments and 17,235 reactions from more than 8,225 unique users were assessed across news sites and our own, competitor and campaigner social feeds. Our subsequent communications strategy was guided by this social data analysis. Not only was all content crafted based on our understanding of the various conversational themes and concerns, all influencers selected to communicate the message were found through the analysis of the data - their expertise affinity and reach - and grouped to talk to different personas. While competitors were still awaiting the results of a survey, we had extensively assessed a huge volume of data, made a strategically and environmentally critical decision, and communicated it to over 3.5 million Kiwis. We also identified key influencers within the conversation for expertise, affinity and reach.