Clients Morrisons, Industry Grocery, Expertise Brand Communications
Challenge
Over the last five years, Morrisons has nurtured a perception of delivering fresh food at low prices, in their big shops. The challenge for us was to deliver the same in a convenience format and change the way customers think of convenience store shopping. If the competition was about being ‘supermarket’ fresh, M local needed to be ‘market’ fresh and we needed to design the strategy, visual identity and retail concept for the brand that celebrated a proud food heritage and told a credible ‘field to fork’ story.
Insight
UK ‘top 4’ supermarket Morrisons, wanted to exploit opportunities in the growing convenience food retailing market. Using this as an opportunity to learn from global best practice and ‘leap frog’ the sector, they wanted a new convenience store design that dispelled the long held belief that convenience shops don’t sell fresh food.
Solution
The interior design embodies the atmosphere of a marketplace with clear lines of sight, the use of tile-work, exposed architecture and natural materials, such as wood and wicker. The M local name itself establishes a strong link to the Morrisons parent brand, while evoking a more neighbourhood-focused store. The new visual identity retains the design equity of Morrisons’ green and yellow, however it introduces a fresh green to the colour palette and a typographic style that takes it’s references from the eclectic and hand crafted feel of a true market place.
“M local provides the most differentiated and compelling small shop offer the UK has seen in many years. Based on a design that’s rooted in strategic brand knowledge, M local allows neighbourhood communities to experience the fresh food that Morrisons is famous for, in an environment that is truly reflective of everything our brand believes in.” – Joe Ward, Head of In-Store Marketing, Morrisons