Albert Heijn is the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands with over 1,000 stores. To help bring Albert Heijn’s customer-first vision to life across multiple channels, APS were a natural choice as an experienced in-house agency partner. The award-winning global agency won the pitch process against a number of key competitors.

Overview

As a global communications company working in-house with a number of retailers, APS understands the demands of multi-channel campaigns throughout the year. Their teams work closely with a number of lead agencies, with creatives able to quickly immerse themselves in a campaign – expanding key visuals and concepts and delivering fully-fledged communications, on tight timelines and budgets.

Think

APS provides a unique, one-client touchpoint, taking any brief from concept through to completion and delivery – whether this is POS and packaging in store, creative concepts, video, photography, design, digital or social media content creation.

Create

Being onsite allows for shorter lines of communication. Creative teams work as one with the client to ensure each campaign’s true potential is realised and value-added at every point of the journey.

Deliver

The APS creative network globally supports Albert Heijn’s onsite team in Zaandam – however support will predominantly come from APS’ Halfweg creative hub and APS’ Eindhoven technical hub who have been working closely together with the onsite team since day one, to ensure brand and cultural immersion.

“Our partnership with APS Group has allowed us to deliver on a vision we have had for some time now: to increase control of our marketing communications.”

Albert Heijn Studio Director

Hoya is driven by a passion for partnership and innovation. They needed a new display to showcase their lenses and wanted them to be more sustainable than the existing ones they were using.

For the first campaign we used bamboo instead of aluminum and plastic and Katz Board instead of normal cardboard.

We made all display bases re-usable and everything modular so Hoya doesn’t need to switch the whole display for each campaign.

Hoya is driven by a passion for partnership and innovation. They needed a new display to showcase their lenses and wanted them to be more sustainable than the existing ones they were using.

For the first campaign we used bamboo instead of aluminum and plastic and Katz Board instead of normal cardboard.

We made all display bases re-usable and everything modular so Hoya doesn’t need to switch the whole display for each campaign.

Superdrug wanted to engage a younger, more fashion-forward audience: an audience that would come in-store to glam-up and experiment.

Think

Affordable beauty has long been part of the core Superdrug proposition, so extending it to affordable beauty services was a logical step. Hence, the introduction of a unique high-end retail beauty concept which was to be premiered in Cardiff, prior to a potential nationwide roll out. The principle was beautifully simple. What was required was an equally beautiful, game-changing approach that would introduce a whole new audience to the idea of ‘glam-while you-wait’.

Create

We created dedicated areas for the beauty and hair salons which would integrate stylishly into a store environment and provide a platform for a glamorous launch campaign: and so Beauty Studio and Hair Space were born.

The launch had to satisfy two key criteria: create a social buzz and engagement at a local level and generate excitement at a national level among the target demographic and key influencers (e.g. beauty bloggers).

Deliver

The creative theme represented a mix of 1950s retro glam and pop art: candy-coloured and fun. Shareable real-time digital content featured on in-store displays and interactive/mirrored screens – connecting the salon with the online world of dedicated followers of fashion and beauty.

Together we worked on delivering:

• Point of sale – artwork production and delivery for the new store
• Logistics and fulfilment – sourcing of materials
• Systems and support – provided a digital screen delivery system that deploys real-time content, as well as the technical support

All of the photography and artwork for in-store and launch comms were designed and produced by our creative team, along with all of the necessary digital content and animations, an in-store catwalk and a selfie app enabling customers to take a pic or video of themselves strutting their stuff and share it instantly.