Not strategy or creativity, but collaboration led to our Effie

A retail chain is under pressure every day. Every day, paying customers are needed to justify fixed costs such as staff and energy. Wibra's marketing goal has therefore been to boost sales so that revenues exceed costs. With flyers, promotions, out-of-home posters, and radio spots, Wibra showcased its offerings.

There’s nothing wrong with that goal, but it is limiting. You're focusing solely on in-market audiences. By mainly engaging with them, you're missing out on the potential to influence future demand. But how do you convince a discount retailer, who must constantly focus on staffing and is always in the short-term race, to change their approach?

Unfortunately, in 2020, Wibra went bankrupt. Fortunately, a restart immediately followed. And 1 thing was clear: that restart had to be the beginning of healthy growth. In our collaboration with clients, we want to be more than just 'the advertising agency'. We are an extension of their teams. We understand them. We work purposefully. We unburden. And we dare to challenge. That is our formula for success. But what specifically changed in our cooperation with Wibra?

We knew Wibra was a well-known name. But what did the target audience still think of the brand? Based on budget-efficient market research, we went in search of substantiated insights. For the first time, we mapped the funnel. We identified brand associations and analyzed differences between target groups. This knowledge enabled us to define clear objectives.

You shape a brand in the mind and heart of your target audience through the sum of your actions. Wibra's annual plan is therefore more than just a timeline with fun campaigns and actions. Every radio and digital campaign, every branded content campaign, and every influencer partnership is part of a bigger picture. Through a creative story (That's Wow from Wibra), we explicitly, but sometimes also implicitly, connect all the storylines. We attract attention through mass campaigns and then nurture the attracted audiences – often digitally – with targeted messages in other campaigns.

A bankruptcy is traumatic for an organization. We understood that. That’s why we gradually built trust. Since 2023, data sharing has been the accelerator for this. By openly and transparently sharing its sales data with us, Wibra allows us to measure the impact of our actions more effectively. In KPI meetings, we discuss this impact, looking for confirmation, new insights, and areas for improvement.

If you always do the same thing, you can’t expect different or better results. Based on the trust we’ve built, we regularly challenge Wibra to step out of its comfort zone. Over the past few years, we’ve presented many ideas—some realized, others not, like the Wibrrrrator (because Hema beat us to it). Campaigns like "Komt da van bij Wibra?" and Wilik/Ouiça were born from proactive briefings. We also see that Wibra is increasingly allowing more room for creativity. The "compound effect" of this freedom is clearly reflected in the acceleration of results.

We have a lot of contact with each other. Together we look for strategic and operational solutions to achieve the objectives. And we have fun doing that. A lot of fun. There isn't a meeting in which there isn't laughter. Although the marketing department of Wibra is located in the Netherlands, we have found a way to form and evaluate the plan at the right time with all stakeholders, including Wibra Belgium. There is room for input, feedback and optimizations.

We are convinced that this wow-collaboration has helped lay the foundation for the exceptional results. The great thing about winning an Effie together is that it makes us feel even more like one team. And of course, we’re hungry for more. We hope that the campaign for Wibra’s very first store in France will be another success.