The Brief

Gander, a world-first award-winning app created to reduce food waste, has transformed the spending habits of Northern Ireland shoppers with a significant soar in downloads and increased sales of yellow stickered foods for retailers.

Gander integrates directly with a retailers POS which enables retailers to automatically display to shoppers in real-time all reduced-to-clear food on the shelves within their local store.  Furthermore, Gander does this automatically, meaning nothing changes in store at all and no additional staff training. The app allows the customer ultimate control over what reduced priced goodies they search for, whether it is by location, favourite stores, reduction, food type and even dietary.

The Approach

The vision of Gander was to position it in the marketplace as a valuable and trusted go-to-tool that will become part of its customer’s everyday lives, allowing them to save money and feel they are helping to address the problem of food waste.  Establish a core tribal following that will spread the good word. Be valuable business asset to our retail partners by delivering not only an improved bottom line, but also positively impacting on the environment. A feel-good, do-good app.

Working with the Gander team, we believed the communications strategy needed to be based on a fun and relevant approach to the concept of reduced food and yellow stickers, with the aim of making it a mainstream purchase. As this is not an area that has been extensively marketed traditionally, we felt it necessary to re-educate consumers on these products, stressing the importance that these products are still in date and maintain the same great taste. From that core idea we developed an engaging, informative and conversational campaign aimed at changing perceptions of yellow-label foods.

The Outcomes

Over 41,000 downloads achieved and growing

8,000 – 10,500 active weekly users

Placed in top 12% of app downloads nationally. Significant as only operationg in NI currently

45% more reduced-price food sold = 45% more kept from waste

Stores on average selling between 85-100% of their reduced product shown on Gander, with ywllo-stickered items selling 40% quicker

Gander: “From our perspective we couldn’t have picked a better agency. Rumour Mill has breath of knowledge across all forms of PR, marketing and digital and influencer activity, which is required to launch a product and from our research there are very few that can offer all of these things and with genuine expertise in each. We approached our campaign to sell Gander to other retailers through more traditional forms of PR with a splash of social media. Ultimately this led to heaps of interest in local markets but also an international reach! We approached our consumer outreach with a more digital and influencer-led campaign – leading to lots of downloads and importantly active users.”       

Accolades

  • WINNER – PRCA Dare Awards 2020 – Best Consumer Relations Campaign – Gander
  • WINNER – PRCA Dare Awards 2020 – Digital and Social Media Campaign – Gander
  • HIGHLY COMMENDED – PR Week 2020 – Best Technology Campaign – Gander
  • HIGHLY COMMENDED – Belfast Telegraph Business Awards 2020 – Gander
  • FINALIST – UK Agency Awards – Best PR Campaign and Campaign Effectiveness Award 2020 – Gander
  • FINALIST – PRCA Dare Awards – Event, Launch or Event of the Year 2020 – Gander
  • FINALIST – PRCA Dare Awards – Integrated Campaign of the Year 2020 – Gander