2025 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

For years, the emotional attachment of Quebecers to Rona had deteriorated: partly due to resentment over seeing one of Quebec's flagship companies "sold to Americans," but also due to the deprioritization of efforts behind key categories that had made Rona the #1 retailer for renovation professionals. 2024 marked Rona's return as a contender for the title of "Quebec's beloved brand." Launched in spring, the new "BuildRONAmission" brand platform revolved around the intention to demonstrate Rona's unparalleled proximity to the reality of local renovators.

The objective was clear: generate a significant increase in spontaneous awareness while improving brand expertise perceptions.

Facing pressing business challenges in markets outside Quebec (where the brand had to launch Rona+, a new brand replacing Lowes), Rona had to cut back on the investments initially planned to support the brand campaign in Quebec for the second half of the year. Achieving the brand’s objectives was at risk.

They needed to generate visibility for the brand through other means ,with the ability to stimulate conversation (earned media) and generate significant interactions and engagement.

They dug deeper into the reality of local builders to uncover an opportunity with sufficient conversational value. The particular prevalence of the blending of English and French — a distinctive aspect of Quebec culture — in construction slang quickly caught their interest.

An audit of major retail platforms revealed the absence of this vernacular language — terms like washeur, scrigne, césar, and grinder — in these environments. So, without the correct technical term in French or English, finding the right product can be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Rona's internal surveys of professional customers had already highlighted a constant difficulty in finding specific products due to this language barrier. Several interviews with renovators (both experts and amateurs) confirmed that this reality creates a significant disconnect for Quebecers.

They were onto something.

A sensitive topic, touching on questions of cultural identity, national pride, and the preservation of the French language: all issues regularly stimulating public conversations. And a particularly relevant topic for the renovation world.

In Québec, every major home improvement retailer doesn't speak the same language as its audience, using a vocabulary that is foreign instead of adopting Québec’s unique construction vernacular language.

“The DIYctionary” — improve the shopping experience of Quebecers at Rona by adopting Quebec’s distinctive construction slang across their entire digital ecosystem, transforming frustrating search moments into meaningful brand connections.

Rather than simply messaging about understanding Quebecers, they created a comprehensive connection strategy that embedded this understanding at every search touchpoint.

“The DIYctionary” initiative primarily centered around updating Rona's website search engine to include recognition of an initial list of 225 terms from construction slang (along with AI-based synonym suggestions).

To extend this improvement in the user experience at Rona, the keyword buying strategy (SEM) was also adjusted to account for these new terms. Promotional efforts for the initiative, initially deployed on social platforms (video and posts on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook), were designed to encourage user participation, prompting them to suggest new terms, thus driving engagement (and reach).

The launch video (60s) of the initiative generated so much enthusiasm that a version was formatted for television broadcast (RDS sponsorship).

That said, even after all promotional efforts (and the resulting conversation) subsided, the improved user experience is here to stay.

Through this initiative, Rona became the first brand to offer a tangible and lasting solution to a recurring pain point for Quebec renovators.

The strategy team was instrumental in turning a cultural truth into a powerful insight, solving Rona's broader business challenge of reconnecting emotionally with Quebec consumers. At the core of this thinking: mapping the customer experience and identifying search frustration as the critical connection moment to transform a pain point into a powerful brand engagement opportunity.

By adopting construction slang to tangibly and durably improve the shopping experience for Quebecers on its platforms, Rona succeeded in generating brand visibility it couldn't have afforded otherwise.

The initiative generated 5 million organic impressions on social media. Its launch alone (before the campaign was deployed) created such excitement in the press (traditional and digital) that over 8 million additional PR impressions were generated (with an estimated media value of more than $75K).

Rona's website traffic increased by 125% in Quebec from the launch week and maintained this level for the following 10 weeks. Over 22,000 new searches were conducted on the website, demonstrating the enthusiasm and curiosity generated by the initiative. Additionally, community engagement was very high, accumulating several hundred new term suggestions to date.

Above all, “The DYIctionary” significantly contributed to achieving the brand's objectives, helping Rona return to the status of Quebec's beloved brand with a significant increase of more than 5% in spontaneous awareness for 2024, as well as across all indicators of brand expertise perceptions: category equity of more than 7%, and significant growth between 4 and 16 points in brand perception indexes.

Proof that in Quebec, no other brand is as close to the reality of local renovators as Rona.

Credits

Agency: Sid Lee

* Executive creative director: Jean-François Dumais
* Creative and innovation director : David Allard
* Creative Director: David Lambert
* Art Director: Félix-Antoine Brunet
* Copywriter: Olivier Goulet-Lafond, Alexis Caron-Côté
* Account Group Director: Thalie Poulin
* Account Director: Sylvie Crête
* Account Executive: Gabrielle Crépeau-Hubert
* Strategy: Jean-Claude Kikongi, Sophie Gibeault
* Executive Producer: Marie-Soleil Patry
* Producer : Alexandra Michaud
* Motion designer : Paul Gaspari, Noah Dauphinais
* Editor : Daniel Daigle
* Media relations manager : Pauline Lazarus

Client: RONA

* Senior Director, Brand Marketing: Jacynthe Prince
* Head, Brand Marketing, Advertising and Influence Marketing: Myriam Bernier
* Specialist, Influencer Marketing and Social Media: Caroline Hurtubise