THE CHALLENGE: Breathe new life into a 150 year old grocery chain with a really confusing name. 

In 1871 the two guys who founded Smart & Final moved to Los Angeles to sell steer feed and rope to the miners building the American west. 150 years later, they’re a grocery store with a perception problem. With organice produce AND bulk size bottles of mayonnaise, Smart & FInal occupies a unique space between traditional grocery store and club store. Plus, the store is named after the two guys but in nowadays talk, Smart means cheap and FInal means maybe clearance, maybe discount, maybe thiis is damaged produce. Our challenge was to show shoppers that whether you’re shopping for your household or small business, Smart& Final has everything you’re looking for, in every size, at low prices, all in one place. 

THE RESPONSE: Our response to this challenge was to make work that cut through the noise.  Trying to make your grocery store stand out in a sea of competitors is difficult enough but there’s an added challenge when people don’t actually know that you’re a grocery store.  

We brought a spirit of fun, playful humor that showcased the store’s three pillars of value, variety and convenience while also showing customers creative and unique ways for them to incorporate the stores inventory into their lives. 

Over the course of five years our work has helped to usher in the most profitable year in the company’s history.

We helped the company provide for customers during the pandemic, celebrated their 150th birthday with a campaign dipped in nostalgia and playful humor, and launched the brand’s most ambitious campaign in company history which to-date has exceeded all of our metrics for success. 

The tagline “One Trip & That’s It” was intended to hammer home the idea that shoppers can get everything they need for their household and business including club-size portions of essential products– all in one place. This means the shopper makes fewer trips to various stores and gets everything they need in one go.