Reduce food waste and revolutionise the food retail industry? Get global media coverage and win multiple awards. Or, how about all of the above…
The Co-op Guide to Dating initiative was about stopping perfectly edible food from ending up in landfill, by selling items past their Best Before date and keeping more food in the food chain. The campaign also aimed to help people understand the difference between Best Before and Use By dates.
It was originally planned to launch on Valentine’s Day after a six-month pilot scheme. But the pilot was so successful, the full campaign was rolled out two months early in over 120 food stores.
And it immediately caught the media’s attention, getting global coverage and praise for being “truly pioneering” and “brilliantly executed and hugely influential”.
It also won five awards, including The Grocer Gold Award for Sustainable Futures and the Institute of Grocery Distribution’s Waste Not Want Not award.
The only disappointment was for one lonely customer, who’d called the Customer Services team hoping for some advice on finding love.
The idea started with an earworm of the Elvis Presley song “It’s Now or Never”.
That evolved into “It’s now or never, my date won’t wait” and the campaign strapline was born.
For brand consistency, I used the heart from the East of England Co-op membership card for the visual identity. The initiative launched with posts across social channels and exclusive coverage in The Grocer magazine.
The amount of food that’s wasted in the UK is shocking, but rather than sounding too negative, I tool a light-hearted approach.
Making people laugh is a great way to get them to remember something, so I used puns galore across social channels and printed assets
And lots of white space helped the campaign stand out in the colourful store environment, as well as minimising printing costs.
One insight from the pilot was that people are suspicious of free food and would rather pay a small amount of money.
So I created some 10p characters to bring a bit of fun to the messaging and a family of illustrations that could easily be adapted for promotion all year round.
A crucial part of the initiative was helping customers understand the difference between Best Before and Use By dates, and reassuring them that all the food was still perfectly safe to eat.
After very careful consultation with the business’s Product Standards & Safety Manager and legal bods, the copy was signed off and used in printed leaflets and in-store messaging.
When the food cage was empty, it revealed the message “Too late for a date? Try again at the beginning of next month”.
There were also two short videos made: one filmed with a customer, and the other with a food store manager, Pat.
The campaign got huge media attention. The comms team set up base at a food store in Essex, and East of England Co-op Joint CEO for Retail, Roger Grosvenor, took part in live interviews with journalists from five film crews including local BBC programme Look East and Sky News.
Several months later, Roger Grosvenor and Board President, Sally Chicken, were super proud to join Nick Bunker from Pladis Global and awards host Katie Durnham to stage to collect the IGD Sustainable Futures trophy.
The Grocer magazine featured exclusive coverage of the initiative, with a quote from Megan Tatum in Editor’s Letters reading:
“Well done East of England Co-op. We need businesses with the balls to be radical on waste.
“If we’re to stand a hope in hell of cutting down food waste we need radical moves.”
Placing campaign shelf talkers next to relevant products helped draw attention to the real cost of not recycling, and used seasonal humour for Valentine’s Day and Easter.
I also designed a range of reusable cotton bags, to support the broader business strategy of reducing waste of all kinds.
Following the huge success of Co-op Guide to Dating, the society partnered with Ipswich Borough Council to launch plastic recycling in selected food stores.
The campaign was inspired by another song, “When Will I See You Again?” and was launched on social media.
