FreshDirect has chosen Curiosity as its first creative agency of record following a three-month competitive review conducted by Mercer Island Group. 

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The online grocery delivery company, which has traditionally worked with agencies on a project basis, decided to seek out a long-term strategic partner to help navigate what has become a more competitive market since the pandemic. “We’re looking for that five-year story about who we are and how to portray that to our customers,” said John MacDonald, chief marketing officer of FreshDirect.

Piqued Curiosity

Originally the brand was looking for a local agency partner—the majority of its revenue comes from New York City—but MacDonald expanded its search and said the Cincinnati-based agency stood out because it “challenged” the brand creatively.

“We gave them all of our current brand assets and said, 'This is how we want to market' and mentioned our emotional necessity,” MacDonald said. “If you look at most of our marketing over the last couple of years it's all beautiful food. But they challenged us with, ‘Well who's eating that food and what are they doing over that food?’ Most supermarkets will talk about food as a connector, but they talked specifically about food as a connector in New York City. There are nuances to that.  When you think about it, while you want to be a little bit broad, you [can] still narrow yourself in a very specific way that lifestyle comes into it. I love it when people make me think differently. It opens up the possibilities of conversation and it opens up questions to ask customers and ourselves about how we present the brand.”

‘Functional war’

MacDonald recognizes that the landscape has changed, especially in Manhattan, where the online grocery company was founded 20 years ago. Now there are dozens of competitors in the market, including companies like Byuk, Gorillas, Gopuff, JOKR, Fridge No More and Instacart, many of which champion their 15-minute delivery times. FreshDirect offers its own two-hour express delivery service.

While New York City will be the main focus of its advertising, FreshDirect also has a footprint in Philadelphia, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Washington D.C.

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To differentiate itself, the brand will look to focus its advertising beyond the “functionality conversation," which can lead to more of an emphasis on performance marketing, MacDonald said.

“There's this functional war going on ‘15 minutes, 20 minutes, I can do this. I can do that,”’ MacDonald said. “I think our challenge as FreshDirect is we have to move [the consumer focus] away from this ‘It's nice to have my groceries delivered’ to ‘I've got to have an emotional necessity to shop FreshDirect every week.’ We have those reasons for people to believe. We just haven't talked about them for a long time. We're going to get back to some really good basics about the quality of the food. "

He added, "There's a whole funnel of ways to communicate. There's a whole method of awareness that we can get ourselves back into talking about what makes us great, not only in the food we keep, but how we take care of the food.”

The brand will also be looking to increase its focus on digital. In February, FreshDirect released an out-of-home campaign with the help of Quan Media across NYC subway stations. The digital wall ads included dynamic creative that changed messaging based on weather conditions. FreshDirect also teamed with So Yummy to create 15-second video content focused on seasonal recipes, which included a QR code that links commuters to recipes on FreshDirect’s website. FreshDirect will also utilize its consumer tracking to create personalized marketing for its consumers online.

“We have a very robust office business, we supply offices with food and snacks," MacDonald said. “So now we're tracking who's coming back into the office. When we look at the site traffic and we do our analysis we can see demand start to rise. That tells us 'How do we communicate with them? Where do we go? And what are the merchants doing to help support that?' We can see real-time what happens on the site, what demand is like during the day, we can see demand and we can react in an instant. We can set a promotion, set a reminder, or send a reinforcement. ‘Hey, we see that you're ordering, this is great for your office.’ We're starting to get a lot more personalized.”

A look at the numbers

FreshDirect’s ad spend has been steadily decreasing over the last couple of years, according to Kantar, which reports 2021 ad spending numbers for the brand in 2021 to be nearly $692,000, down from $1.05 million in 2020 and $1.64 million in 2019.

Standing out in the category is no easy task. Instacart now commands 45% of online grocery sales in New York compared to 21% for FreshDirect, according to a report by Earnest Research from last year. Players in the "instant-needs segment," such as Gopuff, Fridge No More, 1520, JOKR, and Gorillas, have received $5.9 billion in funding to date, according to an October report by Coresight Research. Gopuff has captured over half of that: Its valuation jumped to $15 billion after a July 2021 $1 billion fundraiser. The segment is defined by offering delivery at an average of 30 minutes according to report; some have taken it a step further by offering 15-minute delivery.

While delivery speed has been a focus for many companies, it isn’t a top factor for consumers when choosing a quick grocery delivery service, according to Coresight’s report. it ranked sixth—behind low or no delivery fee, price of items, in-stock availability, product quality, and product assortment in that order.

Cooperative effort

In January 2021,  Ahold Delhaize, which also owns brands like Stop & Shop and Giant Food, bought an 80% stake in FreshDirect. Shortly after that, MacDonald was named to his position and in September Ahold appointed Dave Bass, formerly at Ahold company Peapod, to lead FreshDirect as managing director. Bass replaced Farhan Siddiqi who left the company after serving as interim CEO following the departure of FreshDirect’s co-founder David Mcinerney in May.

The acqusition opens up opportunities for FreshDirect moving forward. In Ahold’s full-year earnings report released earlier this month, “a cooperative effort” between Stop & Shop and FreshDirect was mentioned as part of plans to “win” in the greater NYC area.

“Bringing together the best of both brands and linking their digital and physical presences together will enable them to provide a unique and seamless omnichannel offering to more customers, delivering fresh and healthy food wherever, however, and whenever they wish to shop. We believe the combined efforts will generate significant opportunity for synergies and customer experiences that will allow these brands to grow their combined market share in the area,” according to a statement in the report.

According to the earnings report, FreshDirect contributed $702 million of Ahold’s $84 billion in 2021 net sales.

This is the latest significant win for Curiosity, which also recently won work for Procter & Gamble's Zevo insect sprays and media agency of record status for Summit Hill Foods.