Tom's Helps Hannaford Celebrate the Earth

Scarborough, Maine — Delhaize America’s Hannaford supermarket chain is committed to a sustainable business model and regularly shares information about its efforts with its environmentally conscious shoppers. “When we look at the sustainability messaging that we bring to our customers, we find that lots of different demographic groups care about the environment,” says Hannaford communications manager Eric Blom. “In our core geographic markets, this is important to many people that we’re serving every day.”When the retailer’s marketing team considered reinforcing that messaging through collaboration with brands with similar priorities, it looked into possible matches. Colgate-Palmolive’s Tom’s of Maine was at the top of the list.The retailer, who partnered with Tom’s as well as Unilever, General Mills and Seventh Generation, is now in its second year of a fully integrated campaign that it plans to continue for the foreseeable future. The goal is to reach customers with eco-friendly tips like “shorten your shower by one minute” at different points along the path to purchase through social media, digital ads, emails and flyers, culminating with shelf signs and posters in stores.Tom’s of Maine brought Hannaford insights about the natural consumer, “Ally.” When she considers what to buy, she wants to know that the manufacturer is committed to her health and well-being and leaves the planet better than when it started. By providing her with easy to understand suggestions and mainstream solutions to improve the planet, Tom’s of Maine and Hannaford were able to solidify their own credibility as sustainability-focused businesses. “These are very simple, intuitive things that connect with the shopper and her values and supports what Hannaford stands for,” says Matt Smith, customer & shopper marketing team leader for Tom’s of Maine.The campaign ebbs and flows throughout the year, with themes varying seasonally. For instance, Tom’s of Maine leveraged April’s designation as “Earth Month” through shelf signs and a full-page circular feature with messaging designed by Kansas City, Mo.-based VML. Hannaford’s and the partners’ in-house design teams have done the rest of the work. The campaign will focus on energy and resource conservation throughout the summer and the partners will also work together to encourage recycling and reusing bags at other points during the year. “We want people to recognize what the issues are and what they can do to help,” Smith says. “The goal is to make this more than just an Earth Day promotion.”Hannaford stores consistently have messaging about sustainability, but they avoid providing too much information and overwhelming shoppers. “We talk about making it simple for our customers to be sustainable. Part of our brand is to understand that we’ll do a lot of the work for them,” Blom says.The collaboration helped give Hannaford messaging that would stand out while Tom’s of Maine benefited from getting off-shelf displays, which the brand has found are key to driving discovery of its products. Hannaford is conducting internal research to gauge shopper perceptions of the program and to get their views on sustainability topics while Tom’s of Maine is using its own performance metrics. “We already have a very strong business at Hannaford as it relates to our oral care and personal care products, so what we look at is incremental lift over time that can be measured back to the program,” Smith says.

Tom's Helps Hannaford Celebrate the Earth

P2PI MEMBERS

JOIN P2PI

Related Images

Business Topic

Company

Market Segment