What Québec Wants™

Celebrity spokespeople in Québec. Are they still as effective?

What better way to get noticed and tell your brand's story in Québec than to sign-up a celebrity? Quebeckers love them and celebrities have the potential to multiply the impact of your media investment. But times have changed and the thinking on how best to leverage the power of celebrity endorsers in Québec will need to evolve.

Québec superstar Martin Matte goes grocery shopping at Maxi

According to Guy St-Pierre, Vice-President of Loblaws-owned grocery retailer Maxi in Québec, the celebrity comic can help the retailer improve its reputation for freshness. With plans to spend $5MM over the next two years, the ad campaign builds on Maxi's strong association with low prices while stressing its renewed emphasis on freshness.

Maxi's competitor in Québec, Super C, also uses a well-known celebrity spokesperson. Guy Jodoin has been telling a similar story for almost two years with advertising claiming that Super C always has low prices, is always fully stocked and is always fresh - "toujours à bas prix, toujours en stock, toujours frais".

The two deep discount supermarkets were neck and neck in 2014 when we asked French-speaking Quebeckers where they grocery shopped most often.

It's not clear how Martin Matte will help Maxi differentiate itself from Super C. The bigger question however is whether or not Martin Matte can do for Maxi what he did for Honda fifteen years ago. Times have changed and we would argue that social media now requires a much more transparent approach to the partnership between brands and celebrities. As Lily Bradic wrote in Social Media Week last year, "the most effective celebrity endorsements are those who seem like they would be an authentic customer of the product or service that they promote, and enough so that fans and consumers genuinely believe this."

The celebrity better be a committed customer and brand loyalist. And it better be believable to those who are "friends" with that celebrity, at least on social media.

In closely-knit Québec, simply being believed to be an authentic customer of the product or service might no longer guarantee success. The celebrity better be a committed customer and brand loyalist. And it better be believable to those who are "friends" with that celebrity, at least on social media.

So far, Martin Matte has said little to his 700,000 followers about his love of shopping at Maxi other than thanking his fans for their kind words about the advertising.

 

Martin Matte and Honda in Québec

In 2001, after decades of making better cars, Honda faced growing competition in Canada from its Japanese, domestic and new Korean rivals. All had raised the bar on durability, reliability and overall quality, and were advertising aggressively to get a greater share of new-car sales. The problem for Civic was further complicated because the parent company decided to retire the ever-popular Civic hatchback in 2000. Civic sales and market share were quickly eroding. This led to mounting pressure from the Quebec dealer network to shake things up, and stop the migration of sales toward competing models.

Quebeckers love to laugh. So in 2001, the agency enlisted the talents of one of Quebec’s hottest young comedians, Martin Matte. He would deliver the story of Civic's exceptional fuel efficiency in a hilarious tongue-in-cheek way. You can read the full case study from the 2007 CASSIES.

 

 

Quebeckers in the grocery aisle

In an article recently published in Canadian Grocer's newsletter, Marc Inkol of Explorer Group, a Mississauga, Ont.-based shopper consulting company, revealed "the hidden ways people go through stores".

We thought we'd add a Québec perspective to some of Inkol's findings.

Grocery shopping is tiring. A shopping trip that covers all aisles of a large-format grocery store results in the shopper covering a half-mile. That’s a lot of walking. Given this, shoppers will typically not go back for missed items. All product sampling should be conducted in close proximity to a product’s permanent shelf location.

Shoppers typically don’t enjoy grocery shopping. It is a task-driven exercise, with shoppers following the same pattern on each trip. In many regards, shoppers function on autopilot. So getting them to change their shopping patterns is difficult.

Findings from our What Québec Wants survey of 3,000 Canadians in 2014 revealed that half of all Canadians (51.6%) say they "really enjoy grocery shopping". That number increases to 57.2% among residents of Québec. There are also significant differences among age groups between Québec and the RoC; 58% of Quebeckers between the ages of 58 and 67 say they really enjoy grocery shopping compared to 44% of Canadians of the same ages in the RoC. The differences are even more marked among younger grocery shoppers as 72% of Quebeckers 18-24 really enjoy grocery shopping compared to 50% of Canadians 18-24 in the RoC.

Sixty per cent of grocery shopping trips are quick trips lasting less than five minutes. Usually only one to three items is typically purchased at a time.

Quebeckers likely spend more time in the store. They are less likely to say they are willing to pay a little extra to save time shopping (19% in Québec compared to 28% in the RoC according to PMB 2015 survey data).

For many, grocery shopping is similar to driving to and from work; people remember leaving home and arriving at work, but not too much about what happened along the way. Retailers will notice this behaviour most when store sections or aisles are changed. Shoppers find such changes disruptive for an extended period of time because it forces a change in their shopping “routine.”

Product categories that are more difficult to navigate or shop should never be placed in the front or back six feet of an aisle. That’s because this area is a “transition zone” where a stopped shopper is likely to get bumped by another shopper entering the aisle.

Getting people to walk down aisles isn’t easy. The average aisle penetration per trip in a grocery store is only 20% to 30%.

People like “choice” as a concept but have trouble managing it as they shop. The average family shops for only 300 different items in a grocery store annually yet many supermarkets have upwards of 45,000 SKUs. Choice and variety do not cut through the clutter. That’s why many new product introductions don’t get noticed. The solution: set up “discovery zones” to highlight and promote all new items in one place.

Shoppers are more likely to shop for impulse and indulgent items in the last one-third of their shopping trip. They don’t typically purchase these items early in their trip when they’re more concerned about restocking regular items.

Findings from our What Québec Wants survey revealed that Quebeckers are significantly more likely to 'always use a list when grocery shopping' (67% of Quebeckers compared to 61% of Canadians in the RoC). This might explains why they are less likely to buy on impulse (37% of Quebeckers say they make impulse purchases when grocery shopping compared to 48% of Canadians in the RoC). It's also no surprise that Quebeckers are more likely to 'plan meals for the week'  (41% of Quebeckers compared to 34% of Canadians in the RoC).