2023 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Interac helps Canadians control their spending but rising inflation in 2022 made Canadians feel powerless whenever they stepped into stores. Through a national study of Canadian responses to budget pressure, they learned that six in ten shoppers (62%) wanted tools to help them spend mindfully. They wanted to help Canadians reclaim the control that was being threatened by today’s economic conditions. Since using your own money with Interac products is one of the best ways to feel in control of your money, they also wanted to remind Canadians that Interac is a partner for mindful spending.

While most retail environment cues including music are used to stimulate spending, with inflation on the rise, consumers were looking for ways to take back control and spend within their means.

“Sound Shopping” is a music track designed to help Canadians shop more mindfully by leveraging secondary and primary research studies.

Stores are carefully curated environments. Retailers activate different senses – sight, sound, and even scent – to encourage specific behaviours. One fascinating area of research is how music influences shopping behaviour. The findings are surprising: Slow music encourages slower browsing and sad songs increase grocery expenditures. For budget-conscious shoppers in today’s inflationary environment, the influence of traditional in-store music may make the retail experience more fraught.

While Interac couldn’t change the prices on the shelf, perhaps they could influence the environment. If sound could be used to prompt greater spending, could they use it to promote more intentional spending? Enter “Sound Shopping”. “Sound Shopping” is a music track and corresponding behavioural study, designed to help Canadians shop within their means. Drawing from the same behavioural research retailers use to design in-store soundscapes, the track uses tempo, mode, and instrumentation to interrupt the automatic shopping behaviour that can dominate in-store.

Through a research study evaluating the track’s effectiveness, they placed “Sound Shopping” in the hands of real Canadians (with a control group given a track of typical music found in stores). Participants who listened to the “Sound Shopping” reported higher levels of calm and near-universal (98%) satisfaction with their purchases. In particular, participants in their core target of 25–34, were likely to spend 38% less when listening to the curated track. With those results, they released the track widely on Interac.ca, Spotify, Soundcloud and TikTok. In-mall posters with a scannable Spotify code also reminded Canadians of this tool close to purchase. Media outreach and content creator partnerships further amplified their reach.

Since launch, over 46,000 Canadians have visited the “Sound Shopping” experience on Interac.ca spending on average three minutes (+40% over site average). Soundcloud and Spotify combined for 4,500 listens. Media performed exceptionally with TikTok view-through rate three times the average and driving double benchmark click-through rates. The experience earned positive attention for Interac, receiving 13.1 million impressions across 61 press mentions, including in the Toronto Star, Yahoo Finance, and The Globe and Mail, positioning Interac as a problem solver for the “inflation-weary” Canadian shopper.

Credits

Agency: Zulu Alpha Kilo
Chief Creative Officer: Zak Mroueh
Executive Creative Director: Wain Choi
Associate Creative Director/ Art Director: Michael Romaniuk
Associate Creative Director/Copywriter: Marco Buchar
Design Director/Designer: Jeff Watkins
Designer: Ana-Marija Vlahovic
Account Team: Alyssa Guttman, Sasha Dan
Strategy Director: Spencer MacEachern, Patrick Henderson
Client: Interac Corp.
Clients: Andrea Danovitch, Matt Houghton, Meghan Jeffery, Rachel Kellogg, Kenny Johnston, Matt Beck,
Assaf Isaac
Media Agency: Media Experts
Media Team: Mackenzie McNevin, Denise Lum, Keaton Dale
PR Agency: Hill+Knowlton Strategies
PR Team: Cillian Murphy, Blaine Mackie, Kaleigh Ambrose, Aimee Legault
Sonic Branding Agency: Sixième Son
French Agency: The French Shop
Producer: Ola Stodulska, Houng Ngui
Production House: Zulubot
Head of Production: Adam Palmer
Zulubot Producers: Colleen Allen
Director: Sean Deakin
Post Production Company: Zulubot
Zulubot Post Producers: Sarah Dayus, Ben Bentivegna
Editor: Jessie Posthumus
Audio: Noah Mroueh