The unsubtle campaign that asked both customers and buyers to ‘Show Us They’re Nuts’ — grabbing a ‘yes’ from all four major supermarkets and shifting 1
Mr Tom wanted to boost sales by first boosting distribution – achieving listings with the ‘big 4’ supermarkets.
Swiss import Mr Tom had been in the UK for some time, but it was experiencing a lull in distribution and sales. The brief? To spark growth.
S3 knew that to help boost sales they first needed to tackle distribution. The target was set: Mr Tom’s sales growth ambitions could be met if Mr Tom could first achieve national listings in the ‘big 4’ supermarkets – Tesco, Asda, Morrisons and Sainsburys.
Natural Strength
Mr Tom’s defining feature was its unsubtle nutty taste. Our strategy caught retail buyers’ attention with an equally unsubtle campaign.
Taste tests showed Mr Tom’s peanut-packed centre stood out among competitor bars. That was it. The way in. This crucial point of difference was Mr Tom’s true natural strength and its best line of attack against an increasingly homogenous market.
So, how could the campaign own this? We needed to simultaneously capture the attention of our niche audience, all the while cueing the brand’s distinctive nutty taste. S3’s creatives took inspiration from the famously flamboyant and nutty artist Salvador Dali; channelling him to portray Mr Tom’s flair within the brand’s creative.
The Skills
Casting our very own Dali (and the perfect Dali moustache), we conceptualised a series of creatives celebrating Mr Tom’s true nuttiness, managing production from scamp, to shoot, to final designs.
Assets were created for outdoor, supermarket trolleys, social media, digital and print, each emblazoned with the bold campaign call to ‘Show Us You’re Nuts’.
Media was planned to a heavy-weighted, eight-month outdoor campaign, topped off with an experiential event that was broadcast on a 40-metre-long digital screen at Waterloo Station.
Working in partnership with the Mr Tom sales team, we also identified the key confectionary buyers and organised takeovers of the media space surrounding their HQs. This co-ordinated activity gave Mr Tom’s salespeople the perfect icebreaker line to take into their next buyer conversation: Pretty nuts, eh?
The Success
All 4 buyers said yes to Mr Tom – helping shift an additional 1.1m bars.
Picture this: you toddle off to work at Tesco HQ; as you drive down your usual road you see more and more bright yellow billboards, with a peculiar moustachioed man asking you to, ahem, show him your private parts. No wonder this Mr Tom campaign bit big.