Ad(d) to cart

Finnish retailer hijacks entire prime time ad breaks, incorporates character into 15 different commercials

Finnish hypermarket chain K-Citymarket’s new campaign ”Ad(d) to cart” took over the entire commercial break of Survivor Finland, the second most watched show in the country. K-Citymarket’s brand character was seamlessly inserted into ads from 15 leading brands by reproducing set-designs, props, lighting and color-themes. The campaign came together with a completely new business model with a 50-50 cost split between K-Citymarket and the brands.

In an effort to display its wide product range, the retailer recreated endings to every commercial on the 3-minute ad break and seamlessly blended its brand character into every commercial. An on-screen QR-code let primetime viewers add products from different ads to K-citymarket’s online cart.

“We’ve been joking that if there's an ad for it, we have it. This was a fun, new way of showing consumers how wide our product range is” commented Henrik Wahlfors, Marketing Director of K-Citymarket.

The campaign includes 15 leading brands from Finland, e.g. Doritos, Löfbergs, Felix, Lotus, Ingman and Benecol, whose TV-spot set-designs, props, lighting and color-themes were reproduced to the tiniest detail to insert K-Citymarket’s brand character into them.

“The trickiest part was to place the brand character to the ads seamlessly, so that you get that ‘wait, how the hell did they do that?’ feeling. For example, getting the guy to ride an animated bird while giving a cheerful bump to another was a challenge, but in the end we made it work” said Jonathan Fanta, Senior Creative from TBWA\Helsinki, the agency behind the campaign.

Wahlfors was very happy that so many esteemed brands were immediately on board with the idea:

“We invited partners to our office in May with a cryptic message that we’re offering a possibility to do something completely different with Citymarket. After pitching the idea, several brands were ready to commit right then and there.”

“We ended up creating a completely new business model for this, pretty much splitting the total costs 50/50 between us and the brands.”

The campaign spans from TV ad-break takeovers, to social, digital, radio, OOH and print, and will run for two weeks in Finland.