Dr Wills: Retail Proximity

Condiments are won in the weekly shop, a habitual decision made at the shelf. Dr Will’s needed to be the quality led upgrade already in mind before the trolley reaches the aisle. The strategy was to engineer proximity, placing the brand within the everyday journeys that lead to stocked retailers.

R4 traded the media before anything was planned, treating the value created as Dr Will’s asset, not an agency margin, shown up front, with no retained rebates or hidden adjustments. The buy was secured at 40% below market rate, with that value returned to the client to take as a lower effective cost or reinvest into additional weight and coverage.

Planning started with where Dr Will’s is actually bought. Using Experian Mosaic, R4 isolated the ABC1 premium grocery audiences most likely to buy: A: City Prosperity, B: Prestige Positions, G: Domestic Success. These households were already investing in quality food and over indexing in Waitrose, Ocado, Sainsbury’s and premium convenience.

That qualification produced a priority audience of close to one million individuals across Central London, tiered to the highest density retail catchments: Clapham/Battersea, Fulham/Putney, Wimbledon, Chiswick, Ealing Broadway and Hammersmith at the core, extending into Islington, Camden, Shoreditch, Canary Wharf, Waterloo and Greenwich.

The medium followed the audience: a network of roadside Classic 48 sheets, positioned on the arterial routes and residential approaches that feed the stocked stores: Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Co-op and Ocado catchments. Large format, unmissable, and mapped to the path to purchase, the network put Dr Will’s directly in the journeys that end at the shelf.

Across a four week flight, R4 held the line: media delivered as contracted, tracked against plan in real time, and verified after the campaign, including through on site inspection, so proximity promised was proximity proven. Delivery was overseen and reported with the same discipline applied at Trade and Plan.

A single, connected London system: a network of roadside Classic 48 sheets wrapped around the retail footprint, over four weeks of sustained, high frequency coverage:

• 40% below market rate, with the value returned to the client
• Close to one million priority grocery shoppers in frame, across Central & West London’s highest value catchments
• Always visible. Always credible. Always within reach. Dr Will’s embedded into the journeys that end at the shelf.