Kevin the Carrot 2016 and 2017: How Aldi UK won Christmas with the help of a humble carrot

IPA Effectiveness Awards Case Study 2018

Despite success as a discount supermarket, Aldi still had an issue at Christmas. Its core shoppers spent disproportionately more than average on making their Christmas special, but they didn’t spend it all with Aldi. By creating and sticking with the Kevin the Carrot character over Christmas 2016-2017, Aldi stayed more top of mind for its shoppers, built an emotional connection with the brand and showcased its Christmas range. Aldi dramatically reduced its Christmas dip in market share and became the fastest-growing supermarket of Christmas 2016 and 2017.

Traditionally all retailers, including Aldi, have always looked to develop new creative work for Christmas each year. Given the importance of the Christmas period to the overall business performance of most retailers this is not that surprising. On top of this, Christmas represents a time when customers naturally become less loyal to any one store. So retailers really have to try their hardest to hang onto their customers as well as enticing new ones in. Therefore, it’s not surprising that the Christmas period has become the UK ‘Superbowl’ when it comes to advertising. The Christmas season now stretches all the way from the end of October to New Year, with lots of retailers that hardly advertise for the rest of the year piling into the market too. This means you need to fight even harder to get noticed, so you have to start with a bang and then have enough momentum to keep you going until the end. It’s a sprint of marathon length. We learnt that to maintain momentum you need to be integrated and agile across all channels and keep surprising and delighting your customers throughout the long Christmas season. When we conceived Kevin in 2016 we knew we were onto something and were extremely pleased with how well he performed across all of our key metrics. However I think our really brave move was to bring him back, along with Katie and the kids in 2017. This very much went against our natural instincts which are always to come back with something new to maximise both impact and creative opportunity. Who says carrots don’t help you see better!

Adam Zavalis, Marketing Director, Aldi UK
Aldi UK