The Co-operative Food | Somerfield Brand Integration Workshops

The Brief

In March 2009 The Co-operative Food announced its acquisition of Somerfield Food stores. Already a major player in the Convenience Store market, the buying of Somerfield propelled The Co-operative Food business into the major league, making it the 5th largest Food retailer in the UK. Being in the 'Big 5' meant its major competitors were now Tesco's, Asda, Sainsbury and Morrisons.

To facilitate the smooth transition of Somerfield stores into The Co-operative Food stores, a major integration programme was initiated.  While stores were being refitted with The Co-operative brand, Somerfield Store Managers and their teams needed fun, effective training to emotionally and intellectually connect Somerfield employees with The Co-operative Brand promise and customer experience.  They needed both the knowledge and confidence to ensure they could deliver a Co-operative branded customer experience in store from day one of the change over.

The challenge put to NKD Learning by The Co-operative Food was that as each newly re-branded store opened, it was not to see a drop in sales in the 6 months that followed. To achieve this challenge, The Co-operative needed NKD Learning to design:

• A one day colleague event, for groups of 20 to 150 Somerfield employees, that helped them fully understand The Co-operative brand and customer experience. And build the competence and confidence to deliver this with passion everyday
• A two day workshop for Somerfield Store Managers to give them the knowledge of the brand promise and customer experience, as well as providing them with tools and support to lead their teams through the transition, turn them into ambassadors for The Co-operative Food business and protect the all important sales performance.
• A Train the Trainer programme for a team of in-house Facilitators from both The Co-operative and Somerfield, to ensure they were able to deliver the programmes around the UK after NKD Learning had delivered the initial workshops

And all of this needed to be designed and delivered within a short 6 week period to ensure it fell in line with the tactical re-branding roll out plan.

The Solution

To help Somerfield employees feel reassured and confident about the move to The Co-operative Food business, the Store Manager workshops and Colleague events had to be extremely motivational, upbeat and welcoming to the Somerfield teams.

NKD Learning already had a strong relationship with The Co-operative Food through the work that was being done on the new Store Managers Induction programme, and this bond proved to be invaluable to meet the tight timescales and scope of the project. 

Meetings, focus groups and insights into not only the world of The Co-operative but also the culture of Somerfield took place as part of the Discovery phase. Design Labs followed that enabled the creative team at NKD Learning to design engaging, cost effective solutions.

The 1 day 'Living the Brand' Colleague events were designed as part conference, part intimate learning groups. The importance of brands, the history of The Co-operative Movement, its brand story and approach to attracting and retaining profitable customers were delivered 'conference style' to the large group, ensuring that they all heard a consistent, compelling and emotionally engaging message. These key messages were then explored further in smaller learning groups, where individuals started thinking about and commit to how they personally would bring the brand personality and customer promises to life back in their newly re-branded Co-operative Food store.

A variety of creative tools were used across the events that took into account the age range of the groups (17 - 75 years old) and included engaging graphics, inspirational film, interactive activities, creative exercises and a finale – a giant, 84 piece jigsaw challenge!

For the 2 day 'Living the Brand' Store Manager workshops, the focus on day 1 reflected the same messages as the colleague workshops but in much more detail and with stronger commercial messaging – getting to the heart of the Co-operative brand and customer promises and their relevance to commercial success. Day 2 had a stronger leadership focus, allowing the small groups of 20 delegates an opportunity to discuss and plan strategies for leading their teams through this major transition, all the time maintaining customer loyalty and a strong sales performance.

A key part of this workshop for The Co-operative Food was to support Store Managers to continue to reinforce these key brand and customer messages in store after the event. . As a result, all Store Mangers left with their own 'Living The Brand' toolkit, which provided them with a 6 month communications kit, containing posters and a monthly activity pack to keep the messages alive back in their store.

Results

Great comments like the ones below and great scores averaging a high 5.8 out of 6 show how successful the events and workshops were.

“The best training I have ever been on”

“I am so excited about joining The Co-operative”

“What a great business. The event has made me learn so much about what a unique and caring business The Co-operative is”

“After this training, my Co-operative customers will not be disappointed about the service they get from me and my team”

“The toolkit was a brilliant idea and will really help me keep my team engaged with delivering the Co-operative brand”


Change on this scale is a big thing for people, and prior to the workshops the uncertainty by some Somerfield colleagues of working for a new retailer they knew very little about was affecting performance. However after the workshops, the vast majority of Somerfield colleagues felt reassured excited and emotionally connected to their new employer.

And the brilliant news is that this is impacting on performance in a positive way - sales have been maintained in the re-branded stores and in some cases are even stronger than before!