Tremendous success for A.F. Blakemore’s SPAR Christmas campaign

A.F. Blakemore & Son launched a SPAR Christmas campaign in December giving away up to £100,000 worth of prizes.

‘Merry Textmas’ was a 25-day text-to-win competition, running between 8 December 2022 and 1 January 2023 in more than three hundred Blakemore Retail and independent SPAR stores.

The competition featured a daily spot prize promotion where shoppers won one of more than 30,000 spot prizes redeemable at SPAR stores by simply sending a text. Additional entries into a weekly grand prize draw could also be won by downloading the SPAR Merry Textmas app which featured an augmented reality game that could be played in-store.

The grand prize promotion consisting of four weekly prize draws offered customers the chance to win one of four big budget-boosting prizes: cash towards Christmas, fuel for a year, energy for a year or shopping at SPAR for a year.

A.F. Blakemore Group Marketing Director Sarah Ellis said: “We wanted to reduce some of today’s financial burdens for shoppers and our SPAR Merry Textmas game was a fantastic way to do this.

“We are delighted to have achieved a significant campaign performance for customers and stores. Our aim was to drive footfall to participating SPAR stores, with a daily play and the innovative addition of an instore augmented reality game and it has delivered on everything we set to achieve.

“Taking part in an augmented reality game has been a fantastic opportunity for our stores and retailers to do something different for shoppers during Christmas and New Year. We made it as easy as possible for stores to take part in the campaign and supplied them with free POS, instore theatre materials, social media, Spotify and SPAR Radio support to promote it to customers.

“The competition was a terrific opportunity for stores to increase footfall and attract new customers, promote their products and services, and create a positive brand experience.

“Merry Textmas was our biggest in-store engagement campaign last year and following its success we are excited to launch our new Easter 2023 campaign soon.”