The main demographic of Coles was singles and young couples. From a price perspective, the retailer was not very attractive to young families, so Coles wanted to do something about its image to attract more families to its stores. What's more, Coles wanted to become the destination for fresh foods in Australia. Its aim was to take back its fair share in the fresh categories. Just a few months later, the Fresh Stikeez concept – including the Rainbow Challenge – was born. The Fresh Stikeez campaign shows how a retailer can use a spend-and-redeem promotion to change its brand image at the same time as maximising its sales.

To support its healthy eating message, Coles partnered with the Healthy Food Association, which went into schools to educate children about how to make good food choices. The retailer also teamed up with the newspaper trade: if readers bought a paper containing a full-page special about the campaign, they received a voucher for a free Stikeez. What’s more, in addition to running FreshStikeez throughout its 820 Coles supermarkets, the retailer extended the campaign to its 685 Coles Express stores.

Coles went all-out to promote the Stikeez campaign through TV, radio, outdoor and press advertisements, as well as through online and social media. Based on the results of a weekly questionnaire with 40,000 respondents, awareness was already at over 90% by the first week of the Stikeez Fresh campaign. Kids were quick to collect and swap Stikeez in schools, and the campaign exploded on social media. To keep the momentum going, Coles paced the campaign carefully by starting with an introductory phase to let customers meet the characters, and then later bringing in special characters (glow-in-the-dark, glitter and gold)

But then a fresh new character emerged who became an amazing story in his own right…