A pop-up supermarket aisle in the middle of the bush and the non-stop full noise of the Cannes Lions. They might seem like a Venn diagram with no overlap, but they intersect with a silver award for the Aid Aisle campaign from FreshChoice and Dentsu Aotearoa.
The supermarket chain and creative agency teamed up for the Kepler Challenge, New Zealand’s premier ultramarathon event, held in December. They created an aid station with a difference for runners as they entered the final stretches of the gruelling 60km course.
Built specially to fit the Kepler Track, the FreshChoice ‘Aid Aisle’ appeared like a miraculous mirage 51km into the race. It was met with bewilderment from exhausted runners, swiftly followed by elation when they learned they could help themselves to anything. Flat soft drinks, salty goods, chafing cream, energy bars, fresh fruit, even fresh socks were in stock – and all for the special price of $0.
NZ Marketing caught up with Brett Colliver and Mike Felix, Dentsu’s joint Chief Creative Officers, as well as FreshChoice Head of Marketing Travis Tompsett to hear more about the aid aisle and their Cannes Lions triumph.
Q&A
Congratulations on your silver at Cannes! How did you hear the news?
Mike was sitting in the Debussy Theatre after the David Droga talk with Open AI. It had just finished and they said they would be announcing the silver winners. Aid Aisle was one of the first to be played, which was a nice way to find out.
Like all great ideas, your pop-up ‘aid aisle’ for ultra-marathon runners on the Kepler Challenge seems obvious in hindsight. How did the idea come along?
FreshChoice’s brand line is “That’s Shopping Different”, which is a wonderfully clean platform to work from and lends itself to doing things in fun and disruptive ways. When it comes to sponsorships, we simply tweak the line to “That’s Supporting Different”.
During concepting, the creatives worked very closely with the activations team. The two disciplines have quite different ways of approaching things, which we love because it can bring out the best in each other and lead to interesting results.
When the aisle concept was suggested, everyone could instantly picture it. We could see the humour in the visual contradiction of a supermarket aisle in the middle of dense bush and knew it had the right amount of absurdity. But also that it would actually be super useful for the runners.
It sounds like the kind of thing a runner might suggest – any marathon types among the team?
Yep there were a few “marathon types” in the team. Rob (Creative director) does a lot of running. Brett (Chief Creative Officer) has done a marathon and several half marathons. And then there’s Christina (Activations) who was actually a competitor in the race.
That experience meant we were sure the idea was something that runners would love.
It also meant that we could authentically “speak runner” in things like the shelf wobblers and PA announcements, which gave the aid aisle extra personality.
What were the challenges in making the mini supermarket aisle appear and then vanish without a trace? How long did it take?
The trail was obviously there already, so we spent time figuring out how best to integrate with it.
A critical element was building everything on pegs that elevated the shelving above the forest floor. The main challenge with that was the shelves needed to look solid, so the team designed a very thin dark panel along the bottom, making the gaps disappear. Lots of set design stage tricks like that were used to solve the visual challenges.
But the biggest challenge was lugging everything in. The only way to access the area was by foot and each round trip to the carpark was nearly 3km. All of it had to be carried by hand and no one was spared, with everyone from the construction team to clients becoming mules for the day. A big shoutout to Jarryd and Charlotte from FreshChoice who proved they’re not only great clients for buying the idea, they’re also great packhorses.
Best feedback from race competitors?
More than anything verbal, it was the looks on the runners’ faces when they came over the hill and spotted the Aid Aisle. So many people were at breaking point by that stage and you could just see how overjoyed they were to find this oasis.
Any other details we should know about?
A huge thank you has to go to the Kepler Challenge event organisers. We’re very grateful for their support in helping us to activate our sponsorship in such an interesting way.
Another huge thanks goes to Riot Design, the entire activations team, and Jarryd and Charlotte from FreshChoice who were on the ground over the race weekend (and working for many months in the lead up).
And then there’s Two Black Cats who did a sensational job of capturing and creating content from the day. The Post Office did a brilliant job creating the case study. And thank you to Douglas Thorne for allowing us to use his breathtaking race footage.
