2024 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

In 2022, the tide of rising inflation left Canadians, especially young Canadians, feeling powerless whenever they stepped into stores. Through a national study of Canadian responses to budget pressure, they learned that six in 10 shoppers (62%) wanted tools to help them spend mindfully.

Using your own money with Interac products is one of the best ways to feel in control of your money. They wanted to remind Canadians that Interac is a partner for mindful spending, something their credit competitors would never encourage.

Their goal was to increase perceptions of Interac as a partner for mindful spending, while driving traffic and above average engagement on Interac.ca (2021 benchmark of 21K unique visitors).

They focused their efforts on the environment where people felt most out of control: retail. Their research uncovered insights into the science of spending. Stores are carefully curated environment and retailers activate different senses — sight, sound and even scent — to encourage specific behaviours.

One fascinating area of study explores how music influences shopping behaviour. The findings are surprising: Slow music encourages slower browsing and sad songs increase grocery expenditures.

That discovery led to their insight. If music can make you spend more than you intend, could it also encourage shopping restraint?

The result of their experimentation was Sound Shopping, a music track and corresponding behavioural study, designed to help Millennials shop more intentionally, using the medium of sound.

Drawing on the same behavioural research retailers use to design in-store soundscapes, the track (developed in partnership with Sixième Son, a leader in sonic identity design) uses tempo, mode and instrumentation to interrupt the automatic shopping behaviours that can take over in-store.

A research study to evaluate the track’s effectiveness placed Sound Shopping into the hands of real Canadians (while a control group was given a track of typical music found in stores). The results showed that participants in their target of 25–34 were likely to spend 38% less when listening to the curated track.

With those results, they launched their experiment at scale through streaming services and social media. The behaviour-altering track was released on Spotify, Soundcloud and TikTok, as well as on Interac.ca.

To intercept as close to purchase as possible, in-mall posters with a scannable Spotify code reminded Canadians of this tool.

Finally, media outreach and partnerships with content creators further
amplified their reach.

The initiative earned over 15 million impressions across 65 press mentions, including the Toronto Star, Yahoo Finance and The Globe and Mail, positioning Interac as an innovator and problem-solver for inflation-weary Millennials. Earned media saw a 90% positive sentiment rate (20% above target, based their previous music-based campaign, Sound of Spending).

Over 46,000 Canadians visited the Sound Shopping experience on Interac.ca, spending three minutes on average (+46% the site norm), with over 7,000 unique track plays. TikTok viewthrough rates were three times the average for the platform and click-through rates were double the norm, showing their track was effectively engaging Millennials. Meanwhile, influencer content garnered
over 23,000 engagements.

Credits

Agency: Zulu Alpha Kilo
Chief Creative Officer: Zak Mroueh
Executive Creative Director: Wain Choi
Associate Creative Director/ Art Director: Michael Romaniuk
Associate Creative Director/Copywriter: Marco Buchar
Design Director/Designer: Jeff Watkins
Designer: Ana-Marija Vlahovic
Account Team: Alyssa Guttman, Sasha Dan
Strategy Director: Spencer MacEachern, Patrick Henderson
Client: Interac Corp.
Clients: Andrea Danovitch, Matt Houghton, Meghan Jeffery, Rachel Kellogg, Kenny Johnston, Matt Beck, Assaf Isaac
Media Agency: Media Experts
Media Team: Mackenzie McNevin, Denise Lum, Keaton Dale
PR Agency: Hill+Knowlton Strategies
PR Team: Cillian Murphy, Blaine Mackie, Kaleigh Ambrose, Aimee Legault
Sonic Branding Agency: Sixième Son
French Agency: The French Shop
Producer: Ola Stodulska, Houng Ngui
Production House: Zulubot
Head of Production: Adam Palmer
Zulubot Producers: Colleen Allen
Director: Sean Deakin
Post Production Company: Zulubot
Zulubot Post Producers: Sarah Dayus, Ben Bentivegna
Editor: Jessie Posthumus
Audio: Noah Mroueh