McColl’s

McColl’s was los­ing bas­ket share against strong com­pe­ti­tion. With a net­work of 1,265 con­ve­nience stores and newsagents, 60% of McColl’s cus­tomers lived with­in 400m of their local store, fos­ter­ing a gen­uine friend­li­ness between staff and cus­tomers. One cus­tomer put it best say­ing, ​“I feel like some­body at McColl’s, I’m nobody at Tescos.” This warmth, how­ev­er, was­n’t reflect­ed in a brand expe­ri­ence that felt dat­ed and lacked real engagement.

UNLOCK­ING INTI­MA­CY TO DRI­VE VALUE

Our new propo­si­tion, ​‘Your big-heart­ed store next door’ inex­tri­ca­bly linked the con­sumer-fac­ing aspects of the brand and the inter­nal cul­ture. As staff were already liv­ing and breath­ing it, that ethos nat­u­ral­ly radi­at­ed out to customers.

Reimag­ing the brand’s pil­lars and expe­ri­ence through the lens of inti­ma­cy, served as a spring­board for tan­gi­ble change in every­thing, from new store seg­men­ta­tion to lay­out, pric­ing to pro­mo­tion strategy.

EMBRAC­ING A DIS­TINC­TIVE­LY PER­SON­AL IDENTITY

Although the McColl’s brand felt anony­mous, its ori­gins come from a real per­son­al­i­ty – Robert ​‘Tof­fee Bob’ McColl, a Scot­tish foot­ball super­star who start­ed the brand in 1901. To ampli­fy the famil­iar­i­ty and human touch, we reimag­ined the orig­i­nal logo­type and redrew it based on Tof­fee Bob’s orig­i­nal signature.

DIS­TINC­TIVE RELAT­ABLE PERSONALITY

We deployed a lit­tle light-heart­ed ban­ter and lib­er­al use of col­lo­qui­al tone, both in com­mu­ni­ca­tions at HQ and in store – from pro­mo­tions to lit­tle shelf lev­el reminders to pur­chase. Even cor­po­rate mes­sag­ing about the team was deliv­ered in this con­vivial, cheer­ful sig­na­ture style.

BIG-HEART­ED TYPOGRAPHY

Tone was a key dif­fer­en­tia­tor. We com­mis­sioned a friend­ly-feel­ing, instant­ly recog­nis­able house font designed along­side the logo­type. A sec­ond font, for use in-store to com­mu­ni­cate price, is an homage to Robert McColl’s foot­balling leg­end – rem­i­nis­cent of num­bers found on retro foot­ball shirts.

OWN­ING A DIS­RUP­TIVE SHAPE

The speech bub­ble shape formed from the brand word­mark serves as a vehi­cle to ampli­fy inti­ma­cy and chat­ti­ness whilst also dis­rupt­ing in-store. It works as direc­tion­al sig­nage at a high lev­el, is con­ver­sa­tion­al at eye lev­el and serves at buy-lev­el as a ticket.

HER­ITAGE MADE RELEVANT

To bring fun and light­ness to the iden­ti­ty we com­mis­sioned a set of car­toons from a renowned tabloid car­toon­ist — a nod to the brand’s her­itage as a newsagent.