Marketing communications: DfES and ASDA

Innovating retail consumer channels to engage hard-to-reach audiences with real ROI

The brief

Creating partnerships between public and private sectors is the future for motivating behaviour change with hard to reach audiences. Visit an ASDA store and you'll discover Parent Know How - our brand innovation that puts public information on supermarket shelves. And it's award winning - 574% more effective than conventional media.

Public services are challenged with achieving best value from limited funds, and it is notoriously difficult to quantify the engagement of hard-to-reach social groups via orthodox media channels, so innovative brand marketing is vital.

Our role as a branding partner for Department of Education and Skills (DfES) is to identify and develop opportunities that maximise public money for social good, and this challenge was to engage difficult to reach C2DE parents and to empower them with vital information about their children's future such as school change, childcare and teenage pregnancy.

The solution

We placed education policy on supermarket shelves, and created a Parent Advice Centre with ASDA, called Parent Know How. We developed the audience engagement strategy, the channel to take the content to market, the brand and message matrix, the themes and content for 36 booklets and all in-store communications.

Parent Know How was piloted in 14 ASDA stores around London's M25 and was so successful that phase 2 was rolled out across 40 ASDA stores UK wide.

Consumer research demonstrated that 85% of parents have found the material valuable and used the content. Just as important is the effectiveness of the campaign on a per-person per booklet basis. It costs £177.99 to get a booklet into the hands of a consumer via orthodox above the line, freephone and fulfilment services. This solution costs just 31p per booklet. A staggering 574% more effective than conventional media.

'The Parent Know How campaign is a great success and an excellent and cost effective channel through which to reach our target audience.'
Karen Smalley, Department for Education and Skills

DBA Design Effectiveness Awards 2005 ­ Winner

Marketing Design Awards 2005 - Finalist